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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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BE. BAUTAIN 
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' Imp.Dumas Vorzet 





RY OF PRiNA, 
<a ED 
FEB 18 1927 


be, 
ST AL seu 


The PHILOSOPHY of 
fie AR BE BAUTAIN 


By 
WALTER MARSHALL HORTON, Pu.D. 
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology 


in the 


Oberlin Graduate School of Theology 


THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS 


WASHINGTON SQUARE EAST, NEW YORK CITY 
1926 


Copyright 1926 by 


NEw YORK UNIVERSITY 


THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS 


ARTHUR HUNTINGTON NASON, PH.D., DIRECTOR 


THE KENNEBEC JOURNAL PRESS 
AUGUSTA, MAINE 


TO MY WIFE 


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PREFACE 


are accustomed to break off at the Council of Trent, with 

the remark that, apart from the decrees of the Vatican 
Council, there is nothing more of importance to relate. “This may 
be true with respect to the official pronouncements of the Church, 
but the implied assumption, that Catholics have done no significant 
thinking in the last few centuries, is certainly false. Particularly 
misleading is the common impression that, in matters of philosophy 
and apologetics, Catholics have done nothing more than to repeat 
the arguments and the very words of the great mediaeval Scholas- 
tics, without ever attempting to adapt them to the vicissitudes of 
the modern world. 

The last few centuries, on the contrary, have witnessed some 
most interesting attempts on the part of Catholic thinkers to achieve 
a new philosophical synthesis, based in part but not wholly upon 
the mediaeval synthesis, in which modern intellectual tendencies 
shall be as fully reckoned with as were the speculations of the 
Moslem and Jewish philosophers in the system of St. “Thomas 
Aquinas. ‘The history of the influence of Descartes upon Catholic 
thought has never been thoroughly explored; at least in France, 
the Cartesian tendency long outstripped the Thomistic, and its 
effects have never wholly disappeared. “The philosophy of the 
eighteenth century had its reaction, both positive and negative, upon 
the Catholic thinkers of the early nineteenth century. A few, 
like Professor Hermes of Bonn, boldly accepted the standards of 
the Enlightenment, and defended Catholicism on grounds of 
rationality; others, like de Bonald and de Maistre, appealed from 
reason to tradition and authority, thus, all unintentionally, stirring 
up a perfect hornets’ nest of philosophical problems, which it took 
more than a generation to settle. But the most interesting epoch 
of all is the second quarter of the nineteenth century. At this 
time, under the combined influence of political Liberalism and 
philosophical Idealism, Catholic thought began to show signs of 
vigor and fecundity that seemed to. give promise of another burst 


Pie xcs students of the history of Catholic Thought 


Vill THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


of creative and constructive thinking like that which illumined the 
period from Anselm to Aquinas—a promise that grew brighter and 
brighter in the years from 1830 to 1848, and whose fulfilment 
was perhaps prevented only by the great wave of political and 
theological reaction that set in at the middle of the century. 

A few of the leaders of this Catholic Renaissance are well 
known to us: J. A. Moehler and his colleagues at Tiibingen; 
Géorres, Baader, and the whole illustrious circle at Munich; Lamen- 
nais and Lacordaire in France; John Henry Newman—more timid 
and reactionary than any of the Continental leaders—in England. 
But the sudden and abortive ending of the movement buried many 
interesting figures in undeserved oblivion, of whom perhaps the 
most romantic and fascinating, as it seems to me, is Louis Bautain, 
“the philosopher of Strasbourg.” In him, the most diverse intel- 
lectual currents of the century, coming from both sides of the 
Rhine, met and mingled to form a system of Christian philosophy 
which in scope and plan, if not, alas, in execution, deserves to be 
compared with the great systems of the Alexandrian fathers and 
of the Scholastics. The critical philosophy of Kant and the specu- 
lative systems of the post-Kantian Idealists; Scotch realism and 
French traditionalism; the influence of Pascal, Descartes, and Male- 
branche; classical Platonism modified by the influence of St. Au- 
gustine and the German Romanticists; Christian mysticism, and 
Jewish Cabalism; a first-hand knowledge of biology and genetic 
psychology—all these elements went into Bautain’s melting-pot, 
where they were refined by a most acute and critical intelligence 
and fused by the ardor of a passionately religious spirit. Known 
to Catholics as the protagonist of an obscure heresy called fideism, 
of which he was never guilty in the form alleged; known to 
Protestants, if at all, as a clerical reactionary of the school of 
de Bonald and de Maistre—never was a philosophical genius more 
grossly misunderstood by posterity. Yet his ideas, travelling sub- 
terraneously through the works of one of his pupils, Father Gratry, 
have exercised a profound influence upon the subsequent history of 
Catholic thought in France. It is in the hope of reinstating Bau- 
tain in his proper position in the history of religious thought that 
the following pages are written. 

My contention is, in brief, that Bautain represents a most inter- 


PREFACE ix 


esting modification of the Platonic strain in Christian thought, 
under the combined influence of Kant, German Romanticism, and 
French Traditionalism; that he initiated an anti-intellectualistic, 
intuitionistic, voluntaristic tendency in, French Catholic thought 
which still persists in the school of the “Philosophy of Action’’; 
that, through this school, he stands in an ancestral relation to 
French Catholic Modernism (much as Newman does to English 
Catholic Modernism); that, finally, through this same line of 
descent, he is to be reckoned among the progenitors of that great 
anti-intellectualistic movement of recent years which in France is 
associated with the name of Bergson, but which in Anglo-Saxon 
countries goes by the name of Pragmatism. 

This last point perhaps demands a word of explanation. Posi- 
tivistic Pragmatists of the Dewey school will doubtless resent the 
insinuation that a Catholic apologist is to be numbered among their 
intellectual ancestors. “Their ancestors, they will insist, were all 
good sober English empiricists and utilitarians like Hume and Mill; 
there is no blot of mysticism or romanticism in their ’scutcheon; 
if any Frenchman has influenced them, it is Auguste Comte. Quite 
so; but let it be remembered that the Pragmatist movement, in its 
inception, was by no means the cautious, severely scientific tendency 
into which it has now evolved—or degenerated. It was a bold, head- 
strong revolt against all rationalism, intellectualism, and scholastic 
logic-chopping; and, in that revolt, scientific empiricism and relig- 
ious mysticism fought side by side. The left-wing Pragmatism of 
Peirce and Dewey was indeed the legitimate offspring of nine- 
teenth-century empiricism, utilitarianism, and positivism; but the 
right-wing Pragmatism of James, Schiller, and other religious 
thinkers owed its origin to a more complex union of tendencies. 
M. Berthelot has clearly showed, in his brilliant analysis of the 
antecedents of Pragmatism (Un Romantisme Utilitaire), that if 
we are to understand the relation of Pragmatism to preceding 
philosophies we must study the vitalistic and voluntaristic tendencies 
of German idealism, and not confine our attention to the Anglo- 
Saxon side of the family tree. If, then, it is permissible to cite 
such men as Kant, Schopenhauer, Lotze, Maine de Biran, Ravaisson 
and Renouvier when making a list of the forerunners of Prag- 
matism, it is equally permissible to cite the name of Bautain. One 


x THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


thing is certain, at any rate: that William James, in the Preface 
to his lectures on “Pragmatism,” referred to Blondel and Le Roy, 
the spiritual successors of Bautain, in terms which indicated that 
he regarded them as comrades and companions-at-arms in the Prag- 
matist crusade. 

My thanks are due to M. le Professeur Gilson of the Sorbonne, 
who first called my attention to Bautain; to M. le Supérieur Saba- 
tier of the College of Juilly, and M. Abbé Laberthonniére, who 
gave me a delightful day at the old college, and much help in 
tracing Bautain’s influence; above all, to M. l’Abbé Eugéne Baudin, 
professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at 
Strasbourg University, who put at my disposal his large collection 
of Bautainiana, and. who has been giving me valuable advice and 
assistance ever since—going so far as to annotate copies of impor- 
tant Bautain manuscripts for my benefit. I am indebted to Pro- 
fessors W. T. Bush of Columbia.and R. B. Perry of Harvard for 
reading and criticizing my manuscript, to my friend Professor 
Ross Collins of Syracuse for helping me with the proof-reading, 
and to Professor Arthur H. Nason and Miss Hannah E. Steen of 
the New York University Press for their efficient editorial over- 
sight. “Throughout the progress of my research, I should have 
fared ill without the constant and patient collaboration of my wife. 

W.M. H. 


Cape Porpoise, Maine. 
August 19, 1926. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Rn PIRATE teen ny AL Aer ea MLA us Mla a A soa 1h vil 

PMR CES UACHUSL IANS Win ees 1 gcc ets ignated ieke Gon als eye aa doaade Mae beta Re A ee 3 
I. Catholic Thought in France under the Napoleonic Régime: 

Them Teet Oli PACLTOT alist severe caer tte eke tartrate sn 3 


Revival of Catholicism in France at beginning of nineteenth cen- 
tury. Frayssinous, only clerical philosopher worthy of note during 
Napoleonic period. Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme and its 
significance. The Traditionalism of de Bonald and de Maistre. 


II. Catholic Thought in France under ‘the Restoration: the 
Diiheta Zinio yOrmar LacicLonal sti Moir vie, cut i. Oa 16 


Lamennais’s Essai sur Pindifférence en matiéere de religion. Demo- 
cratic and liberal tendencies implicit in the Essai. Ballanche. 


III. The Religious and Philosophical Situation in France in 
1833: the Decline of Traditionalism and the Rise of Lib- 
rahe OER OMIGISH) Ganicge TAA Lek aise ed ano ik ae nce deg Laker 25 


The Traditionalist apologetic inopportune after the Revolution of 
1830. Lamennais’s change of front. The Political liberalism of 
PAvenir and Ere Nouvelle. Prevailing philosophical tendencies; 
triumph of Cousin’s Eclecticism over the Sensualism of Condillac 
and the Scotch realism of Royer-Collard. Need of a new Catholic 
apologetic to meet the new philosophical situation. The Abbé Bau- 
tain and his attack upon the old apologetics. 


IV. Main Currents in German Catholic Thought, 1800-1833 36 
Parallels and contrasts between the Catholic revival in France and 
the Catholic revival in Germany. Romanticism and Catholicism. 
Three main tendencies in German Catholic Thought at this period. 
Hermes and the school of Bonn. Giinther and the school of Vienna. 
Schelling, Baader, and the school of Munich. The Tiibingen school. 
The school of Mayence and its relation to the school of Strasbourg. 


CuapTer I. Louis Bautain: The Odyssey of an Ardent Soul... 56 
Early life. Relations with Cousin, Jouffroy, and Damiron at the 
Ecole Normale. Thesis, De idealismo et phaenomenismo. Becomes 
teacher of philosophy at Strasbourg; Fichte’s influence upon him 
predominant at this period. Nervous breakdown; Mlle. Humann 
rescues him from suicide and converts him to Catholicism. Course 
in Metaphysics, 1821-22, marks conversion. Founding of the ‘Stras- 
bourg School”; period of greatest influence. Controversy with the 
Bishop of Strasbourg. Philosophie du Christianisme. Recantation. 
Break-up of the Strasbourg School. Publication of Bautain’s philo- 
sophical works; their complete failure to attract attention. Choses 
de Pautre monde. 

iAerEmit a habtain 4872 .Panvitalisties. .... Gisoyos oe ce, ae 102 
Bautain as a system-builder. His central idea, life as conditional 


spontaneity. Formulated most exactly in the Propositions générales 
sur la vie. Bautain’s panvitalism. Four other ideas of great im- 


Xu 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


portance in his system: (1) the idea of Nature; (2) the idea of 
Being, or God; (3) the idea of Man; (4) the idea of Rapport. 
Ethical and political implications of the idea of life as rapport, or 
limited spontaneity. Religious implications. Educational implications. 


CHAPTER LLL. Bautain 1a a sVOlUNtaLISt. os tk ee eee 


iD 


II. 


III. 


CuapTer IV. Bautain’s Place in the History of Thought 


I. 


Il. 


If. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


INDEX 


Bautain’s Critique of the Reason: His Anti-Intellectualism 
Genetic psychology of the knowing process: priority of will over 
intellect. Reason and intelligence: Bautain as an intuitionist. Rea- 
son and faith: Bautain as a fideist. Reason and revelation: Bautain 
as a traditionalist. Final upshot of Bautain’s critique of the reason. 


Bautain’s Theory of Truth and Certitude: His Semi-Prag- 
MALiSMT Gaye eee ee Che GN ier a ee oo ae 


The meaning of truth. The psychology of certitude. The criterion 
of truth: Bautain and William James. 


The Apologetics of the Heart and the Apologetics of the 
Intelligence’ jr tps, tas al) SOs sees ates rer aU ee 


The apologetics of the heart illustrated in the Philosophie du Chris- 
tianisme. Relation to the apologetics of the intelligence. Theology, 
philosophy, and science. The method of analogy. Bautain and the 
old apologetics: rejection of the cosmological and teleological argu- 
ments, and the argument from miracle. Why did the Church reject 
the new apologetics? 


Bautain and His Contemporaries 


His critique of eighteenth-century philosophy. Critique of the Scotch 
school. Critique of German Idealism and French Eclecticism. Cri- 
tique of Scholasticism. Critique of Traditionalism. Position of 
Bautain midway between French Traditionalism and German Catho- 
lic Romanticism. 


Bautain as an Eclectic: His Philosophy of the History of 
Thought 


Christian Eclecticism. ‘True and False Philosophy.” Classification 
of the historic philosophies. Final formula for Bautain’s philosophy. 


Bautain’s Influence upon the Subsequent History of French 


Catholic Thought 


French Catholic Thought in the nineteenth century falls into three 
main periods; Bautain’s philosophy gives us the epitome of all three. 
Bautain’s influence upon the dying Traditionalist movement: Bon- 
netty and the school of Louvain. Influence upon Maret. Upon 
Gratry. Ollé-Laprune. The Philosophy of Action. Its Relation to 
Anglo-American Pragmatism and Catholic Modernism. Bautain’s 
relation to the Modernist movement. The persistence of his influence. 


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PAGE 


142 
142 


190 


209 


233 
234 


263 


284 


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INTRODUCTION 


I 


CaTHOLIC —THOUGHT IN FRANCE UNDER THE NAPOLEONIC 
REGIME: THE RIsE OF TRADITIONALISM 


T THE DAWN of the nineteenth century, Roman Catholicism 
seemed to have lost its hold upon the French people. In 
the eyes of the average citizen of the Republic, the Church 

stood condemned because of its close association with the Old 
Régime. Public worship was no longer proscribed, as it had been 
from 1792 to 1795; but many of the clergy were still in exile 
or in prison because of their hostility to the new order, and the 
little bands of the faithful which gathered here and there in private 
houses and improvised sanctuaries did so under the shadow of public 
disapproval. In the eyes of the intelligentsia, trained in the school 
of Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Holbach, historic Christianity, like all 
“positive” religions, was a vast imposture, devised by clever priests, 
tending to shackle the intelligence and to put a drag upon all 
progress. A certain reaction against atheism was visible; the man- 
date had gone forth that atheism was aristocratic, hence not comme 
iL faut for good citizens; but it would be going too far to say 
that this nascent reaction against atheism was, as yet, a reaction 
toward Catholicism. One professed a certain frigid Deism, after 
the manner of Voltaire; one admired the creed of the Savoyard 
Vicar, in Rousseau’s Emile; that was all. No defender of the 
ancient faith of Christendom had yet arisen who could gain even 
a hearing in philosophical circles. 

Hardly had the century begun, however, when the winds of 
public opinion began to shift, and a revival of Roman Catholicism 
began—a revival which at first took the shape of a formal restora- 
tion, supported chiefly by political reactionaries, for reasons of state, 
but which finally, in the period between 1830 and 1848, assumed 
the proportions of a genuine popular movement. For a time, to- 
wards the middle of the century, and once again in its closing years, 
it looked as though, by a process of mutual concessions, a reconcilia- 


4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


tion was about: to be effected between the ancient religious heritage 
of France on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the secular 
humanitarianism, secular science, and secular philosophy which in 
the eighteenth century had come into open conflict with religion. 
A liberalized, popularized, and modernized Catholicism seemed 
about to become the center of a Christianized civilization. The 
fact that we are to-day in the midst of a similar religious revival— 
which likewise threatens to become a mere blind reaction, thus 
failing to achieve that harmonious cultural synthesis which our 
distraught and disintegrated civilization so badly needs—should lend 
a peculiar interest to the history of this earlier movement. We 
shall concern ourselves here primarily with its intellectual aspects; 
but some account of its social and political aspects will be neces- 
sary in order to give the proper perspective. 

It was Bonaparte who began the external rehabilitation of Roman 
Catholicism. Swept into power on the crest of a wave of reaction, 
conscious that order and stability were what people craved, he saw 
in the Catholic Church a powerful stabilizing agency, which, if 
properly conciliated, might become a useful tool in his hands. 
Not long after his accession as First Consul, he freed the imprisoned 
priests, on condition that they should not oppose the Constitution; 
and he opposed no obstacle to the return of the exiled priests. 
Then, in swift succession, came the Concordat of 1801, making 
Catholicism the official religion of France, and the amnesty of 
1802, which brought back forty thousand emigrant nobles, most 
of them ardent Catholics. At a stroke, Catholicism was lifted 
from the depths of humiliation to the heights of eminent re- 
spectability. 

Much as the Catholics rejoiced at these events, it must be said 
that the position of the Church under the Consulate and Empire 
was hardly less humiliating than it had been under the Republic. 
Then, she had at least preserved the dignity that goes with forti- 
tude under persecution; now, she had bartered her soul in exchange 
for temporal advantages, and Mephistopheles himself could not 
have been more tenacious than Napoleon in holding her to the 
bargain. He appointed the bishops himself; the captive Pope was 
forced to confirm the appointments; the bishops appointed the 
priests; and so the whole Church became an organ of the State. 


INTRODUCTION 5 


The utterances of the priests were severely censored; a chorus of 
adoration, fear-inspired, arose from every parish; the Catechism 
was revised to include a section on love for the Emperor (penalty 
for sinning against this commandment, eternal damnation) ;* and 
the Master of Europe could smile with satisfaction as he observed 
the exemplary loyalty of his clergy. 

Under these circumstances, it was hardly to be expected that any 
very vigorous or original thinkers should arise among the clergy. 
Thought was precisely what Napoleon aimed to discourage. Dur- 
ing the whole Napoleonic period, only one clerical philosopher at- 
tracted even passing attention: Mer. Frayssinous, whose public 
lectures at St. Sulpice achieved a considerable popularity between 
the years 1803 and 1809.? 


He was able [says Damiron] in the presence of an audience of gems 
du monde, and, especially, young people, to speak in such a way as to get 
a hearing for the words of a priest and a Catholic: it was no small suc- 
cess in view of the prevailing state of mind. Adopting a Cartesian 
position full of modifications and concessions, stripping the Scholastic 
method of its quibbles and its bad form, he made, with a certain energetic 
common sense and some conversance with contemporary science, some 
fairly good objections to the sensualist hypothesis. If, later on, the 
published lectures did not entirely revive the impression they created 
when delivered, it was because they were no longer apropos, and because 
there is nothing sufficiently original and powerful in their thought, and 
nothing sufficiently distinguished in their style.* 


It will be seen that there was nothing very startling about these 
lectures; but Napoleon, who was suspicious of “ideology” of any 
brand, twice put a stop to them: the first time because Frayssinous 
objected to introducing a plea for conscription into a lecture on 
the existence of God; the second time because he had protested 
against the seizure of the Pope.* 

If the clergy were condemned to intellectual sterility under this 
system of censorship and surveillance, there were at least a few 


*Foisset, Vie du R. P. Lacordaire, 1, Défense du Christianisme (Eng. trans., 
17, 472. . London, 1836). 

* These lectures, together with a second ’Damiron, Essai sur Vhistoire de la 
series delivered during the Restoration,  philosophie en France au XIXme siécle, 
were published in 1825, under the title of | Brussels, 1835, 62. 

‘ Foisset, op. cit., I, 11, 468-471. 


6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


laymen capable of original thinking; and some of them contributed 
mightily to the Catholic revival. Chief among them were three 
noblemen: Count Joseph de Maistre, the Viscount de Bonald, and 
Francois-René de Chateaubriand. I mention de Maistre and de 
Bonald first, because their earliest apologetical writings antedate 
Chateaubriand’s; but neither of them attracted public attention till 
much later.” Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme, published 
in 1802, was really the first effective shot fired by the Catholic 
party. 

The Génie du Christianisme is of course not a technical philo- 
sophical work; none the less, it is a landmark in the history of 
Catholic thought. It is the first systematic attempt to present an 
apology for religion on the ground of what Rousseau, in a famous 
remark, called its “utility.” The truth of Christianity is indeed 
defended, with arguments which, as Masson points out, are largely 
borrowed from the Savoyard Vicar’s profession of faith in Rous- 
seau’s Emile ;° but it is upon the value of Christianity that Chateau- 
briand chiefly insists: its aesthetic value, as exemplified in the stately 
ceremonial of the Mass, the majestic architecture of the Gothic 
cathedrals, and Dante’s Divine Comedy; its moral value, as ex- 
emplified in the lives of martyrs and missionaries; its social value, 
as exemplified in the manifold charitable institutions which the 
Church has fostered. “Even though one should deny the super- 
natural proofs of Christianity,” says Chateaubriand at the very end 
of his book, “there would still remain, in the sublimity of its ethics, 
in the immensity of its benefits, in the beauty of its ceremonial, the 
sufficient means of proving that it is the divinest and purest form 
of worship that ever men have practiced.” It is significant that 
this phrase comes between a quotation from Rousseau and one from 
Pascal. They, to be sure, are the classic exponents of the “argu- 
ment from the heart”; but Chateaubriand worked out the argument 
with such a wealth of detail, and made such an impression on the 
general public, that he set the style for popular apologetics for 
almost a century. If the reading of the Emile was for many a 


° Weill (Histoire du Catholicisme lib- Under the Empire, both lived in com- 
éral en France, 6) points out that their parative obscurity. 
influence was at its height during and ®See Masson, Rousseau et la Restaura- 
even after the period of the Restoration. sion Religieuse. 


INTRODUCTION 7 


French youth—including Chateaubriand himself—a first step back 
toward religion, the reading of the Génie du Christianisme was a 
second and much longer step, that led to the very doors of the 
Church.‘ 

Traditionalism, as the philosophy of de Maistre and de Bonald 
came to be called, represents a very different type of apologetics. 
It does not woo the soul; it storms and threatens. From one 
point of view, it does not properly belong to the Napoleonic period, 
for, as has been said, it was practically without influence in France 
until the Restoration; but it was formulated at this period, and 
it bears the marks of it: it is essentially an émigré philosophy, born 
of bitter hostility to the French Revolution and to the philosophy 
which paved the way for it. 

“Is it possible,” wrote de Maistre to de Bonald after the publi- 
cation of de Bonald’s Recherches philosophiques, “that Nature could 
have played such a trick as to stretch two strings as perfectly in 
tune as your mind and mine? .. . I have thought nothing you 
have not written; I have written nothing you have not thought.” 
It is most remarkable that these two men, whose careers kept them 
widely separated throughout their lives, should have had so much 
in common. Born in the same year (1754), they both remained 
obscure personages in remote provincial towns until the Revolution 
wrecked their fortunes, overturned all the institutions they held 
dear, and drove them into exile. “Then, simultaneously, in 1796,° 
they broke into print with books so similar in point of view that 
they gave the effect of a concerted broadside: de Bonald with 
his Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la société, pub- 
lished in Constance; de Maistre with his Considérations sur la 
France, published in Neufchatel. Both books were proscribed by 
the Directory, and naturally were not widely influential except 
among émigrés. De Bonald later found favor with Napoleon 
and returned to France; de Maistre spent most of his life an exile 
from his native Savoy, as envoy of the King of Sardinia at the 
Russian court; but in spite of the fact that they never collaborated 
with one another, their works continued to show a remarkable 


7 One of Bautain’s Jewish converts had Philosophy” led to the third and decisive 
precisely this experience. For him, con- step of actual submission to the Church. 
tact with Bautain and the “Strasbourg ® It is true that de Maistre had already 

published some unimportant pamphlets. 


8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


degree of unanimity, which naturally augmented as time went on. 

De Bonald and de Maistre are at one in their diagnosis of the 
disease which caused the break-down of civilization in France in 
1791: it was all the result of a false philosophy, which, carrying 
out the principle of the Protestant Reformation, placed its trust in 
the reason and conscience of the human individual, fancying it 
could improve upon nature; it substituted a rational, artificially 
concocted constitution for a divinely ordained social order that had 
stood the test of the centuries; and it substituted its own wild 
speculations about the universe for the traditional dogmas of the 
Catholic Church, the trustee of all Truth. ‘The philosophies of 
the eighteenth century talked much about Nature, and natural law, 
and natural religion; but behold how Nature revenges herself 
upon them, exposing the error of their most unnatural doctrines 
by their odious consequences! ‘They appealed to reason: let it 
be proved by reason, then, that authority and faith, not reason, are 
the only safe guides; that society is not the result of a contract 
between individuals, but of a primeval fiat of God; that human 
nature is bad, not good, and the human conscience untrustworthy— 
hence democracy is doomed to failure and the hope of universal 
peace and endless progress is a chimera. 

The doctrine which de Bonald and de Maistre both single out 
as the chief object of their attack is Rousseau’s theory that civilized 
society arose artificially, by contract, out of an original individual- 
istic “state of nature,” when all men were free, equal, and virtuous 
like the happy savages of North America.® They maintain, on the 
contrary, that the social state is man’s natural state, and that the 
individual by himself is helpless and morally corrupt. 

Rousseau failed to distinguish, says de Bonald, between man’s 
native state, which is one of infantile weakness, and his natural 
state, which is a state of full development only to be reached in 
society. [he savage state may be man’s native state, but it is not 
his natural state. De Bonald is fond of citing certain cases of 
children abandoned in the forest and left to grow up wild, to 
prove that the individual owes all to society. “Man exists only 

* Rousseau may not have meant. just 


this, but this is how he was understood 
by both friends and foes. 


INTRODUCTION 9 


11° “Society 


for society, and society forms him only for herself. 
is the true and even the sole nature of man.’ As for the con- 
tract theory, history and logic are both against it. As far back 
as we may look, we shall always find man living in society and 
subject to environment; and a contract, by very definition, pre- 
supposes the existence of a regulative power to whose authority 
the parties may appeal in case of violation. Hence power, not con- 
tract, is the “principle constitutive of society.”** In the family, 
the simplest society we know, not liberty and equality, but inequality 
and subjection to authority, are the rule. Without inequality and 
subjection, no society. 
De Maistre seconds de Bonald most vigorously. 


Man [he says] can modify everything within the sphere of his activity, 
but he creates nothing; such is his law, in the physical as in the moral 
realm. Man can of course plant a seedling, grow a tree, and perfect 
it by grafting and pruning in a hundred ways; but he has never fancied 
that he had the power of making a tree. How has he come to imagine 
that he had that of making a constitution? 1° 


In other words, stable constitutions are always the product of 
growth; they do not originate in any such artificial processes as 
Rousseau’s contract or the deliberations of the Constituent As- 
sembly. Artificially formulated constitutions have now proved 
themselves essentially unstable; “‘as they were without roots in the 
country and were only placed upon the soil instead of being planted 
there, they were carried away by the slightest breath of air.”** A 
side reference is clearly intended to Montesquieu, whom both our 
authors berate for trying to transport English institutions to France. 

It was not only established institutions that eighteenth-century 
philosophy presumed to question: it was established religious dogmas 
as well. De Bonald and de Maistre are convinced that the calami- 
ties of the French Revolution sprang quite as much from skepticism 
in religion and ethics as from radicalism in politics; and they attack 
the human reason on both counts, declaring that it is just as in- 
competent to discover the truth about the Universe as it is incom- 


De Bonald, Théorie du Pouvoir, Pré- "Principe constitutif de la société, 
faces... chap. v1. 
™ Recherches philosophiques, chap. x1. 8 Considérations sur la France, chap. v1. 


Delbos, Philosophie Francaise, 288. 14 Ibid. 


10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


petent to frame a scheme of government. Over against human 
reason they set divine revelation, embodied in authoritative tradition, 
which they trace back to a primitive Golden Age when man learned 
from the lips of God those salutary principles which are the basis 
of the moral and social order. ‘They arrive at this common result 
by two somewhat different lines of reasoning. 

De Bonald starts by accepting the empiricist theory of knowledge, 
and drawing an unexpected conclusion therefrom. According to 
the Lockian theory, all our ideas are the product either of our 
own sense-perception or of instruction. “The moral and religious 
ideas which some have tried to defend by calling them innate, have 
all been taught us; hence they are not sacrosanct at all, and may 
be freely criticized. De Bonald agrees that environment and educa- 
tion account for all our ideas, and that our moral and religious 
ideas, as well as all our general ideas, are of social origin and not 
the product of observation; but he draws the conclusion that they 
are therefore sacrosanct. “The empiricists based their liberal con- 
clusion on the observation that moral and religious ideas vary from 
place to place, and, hence, must be of human invention; de Bonald 
bases his conservative conclusion on the observation that a certain 
unity underlies all this diversity, suggesting the theory of a primi- 
tive uniform tradition afterwards corrupted. 

He establishes this theory of a primitive revelation with the 
aid of his famous theory of language. Comparative philology 
was just at this time bringing to light the hitherto unnoticed 
likenesses between the different Aryan tongues, due in fact to 
their common origin. The conclusion was irresistible: all man- 
kind had once spoken a single language, the vehicle of a common 
stream of tradition. If language (that is, education) is the sole 
source of our moral and religious ideas, this original language 
is the fountain-head of all truth—for to de Bonald, unity and in- 
variability are signs of truth, and diversification is always corrup- 
tion. The problem of finding the truth to-day is simply the prob- 
lem where the original line of tradition is preserved pure and 
unaltered. The answer is, of course, in the Jewish-Christian 
tradition of which the Church is the custodian. 

But why credit our remote ancestors with omniscience? If the 
human race all springs from a single stock, it goes without saying 


INTRODUCTION 11 


that there was a common language and common tradition at first; 
but why may that language and the ideas it conveyed not have 
been of purely human invention, and hence no vehicle of infallible 
truth at all? That language was a human invention like printing 
or writing was indeed the view of most eighteenth-century philoso- 
phers. Against this view, de Bonald levels his bitterest sarcasms. 
As if man could ever have emerged from a state of speechlessness 
by his own efforts! As if savages could ever have invented lan- 
guage, when the most learned grammarians cannot fully compre- 
hend all the cunning mechanism of it, or exhaust the wealth of 
meaning embodied in our commonest and most ancient words! 
For, mark you, says de Bonald, the earliest languages of which we 
have any knowledge are just as complete as the latest, in their 
complex adaptation to all the needs of thought; and the most 
ancient languages contain the greatest store of hidden wisdom. 
Everything points to the theory that the original language, which 
contained the sum of all wisdom, was taught to the first man by 
his Creator. 

Psychological considerations lead to the same conclusion with 
even more rigorous certainty. It is a common fallacy that thought 
without language is possible. So it is, so far as thought based upon 
sense-images is concerned. But, as Rousseau said, ““When the im- 
agination stops, the mind proceeds only with the aid of discourse”’; 
which implies that thought about moral and religious verities, and 
all things lying above the plane of the senses, is possible only when 
our fellows have first communicated to us the materials for such 
thought by means of language. Speech is to the faculty of learn- 
ing such verities, what light is to the eye: without it we should 
be incapable of thinking such thoughts, as without light we should 
be blind. “ZL’on pense sa parole avant de parler sa pensée.” Hence 
Wwe may see the force in Rousseau’s famous remark that “speech 
appears to have been very necessary to establish the use of speech’’; 
for 1f thought is in general impossible without the use of words, 
the supposed inventors of language could never have thought of 
the idea unless they already possessed language. Man acquires, 
and originally acquired, the faculties of speaking and thinking only 
by being spoken to—because “on lui avait parlé.” ‘Thanks be 
to God for the indefinite pronoun on!” de Maistre once interjected 
at this stage in the argument; for the climax is now at hand: 


| he THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Who was it who created speech and thought in primitive man by 
first speaking to him? Why, God, of course; there was no one 
elseito; dots LOWED, 

It is a curious fact that de Maistre, who seeks to support the 
same theory of a primitive revelation and a primitive tongue, starts. 
out from precisely the opposite premises. Instead of accepting the 
empiricist epistemology of Locke and Condillac, he attacks it-most 
bitterly as the source and foundation of the political and philo- 
sophical liberalism of the eighteenth century—which indeed it was. 
Locke is his béte notre; with the clairvoyance of hate, he perceives. 
what Santayana is fond of pointing out: that Locke’s psychology 
was a “malicious psychology,” designed less to serve the cause of 
pure science than to serve the cause of free speech and free criti- 
cism. If man’s moral and political notions have been learned, 
they may be unlearned; and if man created them, he may re-create 
them. In opposition to Locke, de Maistre takes up the cudgels in 
defense of the doctrine of innate ideas. His defense is very in- 
genious and profound, and perhaps keeps much closer to the facts 
of life than the somewhat ponderous and artificial theory of Kant, 
which it much resembles. 

He points out how helpless the Lockian epistemology is to deal 
with the phenomenon of imstinct, and into what absurdities it falls 
when it tries to handle it. Locke, he relates, was once asked by 
Coste, the French translator of the Essay, how he would answer 
the objection that if a chicken flees from a hawk without ever 
having met one before, many human actions may also be accounted 
for by innate tendencies antecedent to all experience. At this 
Locke got angry, and replied brusquely, “I did not write my book 
to explain the actions of beasts.” ‘“Supiter, tu te faches, tu as donc 
tort!” exults de Maistre. In truth, Locke had reason to be vexed 
at the question. Had he answered consistently with his theory, he 
would have had to give some such absurd response as Condillac 


actually did give: 


The beast will flee because he has seen others devoured. . . . With 
regard to animals which have not seen their fellows devoured, one may 
with good reason believe that their mothers must from the first have 
urged them to flee.?5 


15 . * + . . 
Essai sur Porigine des connaissances humaines, sec. 11, chap. 1v. 


INTRODUCTION 13 


Nothing can be clearer, on the contrary, says de Maistre, than 
that the factor of instinct is always to be reckoned with, side by 
side with the factor of experience (if experience be defined as the 
combined influence of environment and education), and that the 
total knowledge which the beast or the man gets as he passes through 
life varies even more with the innate instinct factor than with the - 
experience factor. “Take as a test case, he suggests, a situation 
where a man and a beast have an experience together: let us say, 
a man and his dog witnessing a public execution: 


When the executioner lifts his arm [says de Maistre] the animal, if 
he is near, may jump aside for fear the blow is intended for him; if he 
sees blood, he may quiver, but no more than at the butcher’s. There his 
knowledge stops, and all the efforts of his intelligent instructors, em- 
ployed incessantly for centuries and centuries would never carry him 
beyond that; the ideas of morality, sovereignty, crime, justice, public 
authority, etc., which are attached to this sad spectacle, are non-existent 
for him. All the signs of these ideas surround him, touch him, press: 
upon him, so to speak; but in vain, for no sign can exist where the idea 
does not preéxist. . . . Who will dare say to you that a volcano, a water- 
spout, an earth quake, etc., are not for me precisely what the execution 
is for my dog? I understand about these phenomena what I am de- 
signed (dois) to understand; that is, all that is in relation with my innate 
ideas which constitute my status as aman. The rest is a closed book.1® 


Having established the all-important réle of innate instinct in 
the knowing process, de Maistre proceeds to assert the superiority 
of instinctive knowledge or “intuition” to artificial knowledge or 
science, arrived at by a process of discursive reasoning. Even in 
the realm of science, he points out, discoveries are not made by 
any such cautious, ponderous process of exhaustive induction as 
Francis Bacon describes; they are the result of sudden flashes of 
insight. Not Bacon, but men like Kepler and Galileo are the real 
founders of modern science. It is absurd of Bacon to discourage 
conjecture: “‘As if man were not condemned to conjecture un- 
ceasingly! as if one could take a step in the sciences without con- 
jecturing! as if, in fine, the art of conjecturing were not the most 
distinctive characteristic of the man of genius in every field!”’?” 
Especially in the realm of morals and religion is this the case; 


° Soirées de St.-Pétersbourg, 1842 edi- 


™ Philosophie de Bacon, chap.1, 34-35. 
tion, Vol. I, 5th Conversation, 287, 288. 


14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


there, the instincts of the race, embodied in tradition and custom, 
are far more worthy of trust than the reasonings of philosophers— 
as the French Revolution has proved. 

But if instinct and intuition are sources of truth, why should 
not the individual be permitted to criticize tradition? If the 
rationalistic philosopher is to be muzzled, should not the prophet 
and the genius be left free? and may we not expect new light 
from them in the sphere of religion and morals, as well as in 
science? Here is a real inconsequence in de Maistre’s thinking, 
which springs from his effort to effect a synthesis between two 
inconsistent philosophies, traditionalism and mysticism. It has 
frequently been pointed out that, so far as his doctrine of intuition 
is concerned, de Maistre is heavily indebted to Saint-Martin, the 
eighteenth-century theosophist and illuminé. Now Saint-Martin 
believed in the immediate apprehension of truth in the religious 
sphere, through mystic illumination, which made authoritative 
tradition and all other second-hand knowledge unnecessary. Here 
de Maistre parts company with Saint-Martin. Neither mystic in- 
sight nor reason, but authority, is to him “‘the motive of decision 
which ought to precede all others.”** Why? Because the age of 
inspiration was at the beginning of history, before man’s sin had 
corrupted his instincts. “To-day, man is a fallen creature, to whom 
occasional sporadic flashes of insight come, to remind him of his 
former state of perfect beatific vision, but condemned for the most 
part to plod along with the aid of discursive reason, taking as the 
chief guide of life that body of tradition which has come down to 
him from a happier epoch. | 

It will be observed that de Maistre’s account of the origin of 
tradition is somewhat different from de Bonald’s. The original 
deposit of truth was not dictated to man by God, and passed on 
by word of mouth (thus forever remaining in the class of hearsay 
information); but, on the contrary, it was intuitively apprehended. 
The Golden Age was an age when man was immediately conscious 
of God, and perceived all truth at a glance, without the necessity 
of reasoning about it. De Maistre argues that men’s knowledge 
in the antediluvian period must have been stupendous, in order to 
draw down upon them such a stupendous punishment as the Flood; 


18 ae : 
Soirées, I, 2nd Entretien, 132. 


INTRODUCTION 15 


for moral responsibility is directly proportional to knowledge. 
Again, all the ancients have the tradition of a Golden Age; and 
archaeology is making us acquainted with the wisdom of the Etrus- 
cans and the Egyptians. ‘The Orient seems to have been the theatre 
of this earliest civilization, and it is thus a significant fact that 
Orientals have shown so little aptitude for our Western sciences, 
based as they are so largely upon discursive reasoning. “One 
would say that they still remember primitive science and the era 
of intuition.” 

The theory of language has an important place in de Maistre’s 
argument, as in de Bonald’s. He expresses regret that we do not 
have more nearly complete knowledge of the languages of savages; 
he believes they would reveal unexpected traces of the primitive 
unity of tongues. But the savages are not to be described as primi- 
tive people; they are rather to be thought of as degenerates. “‘It is 
the last degree of degeneration (abrutissement) that Rousseau and 
his kin call the state of nature.”’ Hence their languages are rem- 
nants and not rudiments of more developed tongues. Following up 
the vague traces of unity discoverable in even these degenerate 
tongues, and setting them alongside the more impressive evidences 
of an original unity underlying all the languages of the civilized 
peoples, both ancient and modern, we shall be able to make a col- 
lection of truly primitive words—words not only common to all 
languages, but full of a mysterious wisdom, often quite foreign to 
the people who used the word! 


The farther one goes back [says de Maistre] toward those times of 
ignorance and barbarism which saw the birth of the languages, the more 
logic and profundity one will find in the formation of words; and... 
this talent disappears by a contrary gradation as one comes back toward 
the epochs of civilization and science.** 


The word-making powers of the men of de Maistre’s Golden 
Age were as instinctive as their other powers; language originated 
not by a long process of laborious “invention” but by a sudden and 
spontaneous outburst, under the influence of the divine Word. 
The growth of language is a natural social process, like the growth 


 Soirées, II, 95. *1 Thid., 118. 
» Thid., 100. 


16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


of political constitutions. De Maistre shows a somewhat amusing 
antipathy for scientific terms and other invented words, parallel 
to his antipathy for invented constitutions. 

On the whole, it must be said that de Maistre’s views, as regards 
the origin of language, traditions, and institutions, and as regards 
the theory of knowledge, are much more plausible than de Bonald’s. 
The latter felt the influence of the former, and in his Législation 
primitive he at length came out in favor of the existence of innate 
ideas;** but it must be pointed out that he thus seriously weakened 
Traditionalism as an argument for political absolutism and theoc- 
racy, for he was making a concession to the spontaneity of the 
individual. De Maistre in turn seemed to feel the weakness in his 
position, and came more and more to combine his form of the 
argument for a primitive revelation with the Bonaldian form.” 
Thus an ambiguity was introduced into the Traditionalist position; 
it may mean either the necessity of accepting tradition blindly, or 
the superiority of intuition over reason. In the former case, it is 
a powerful argument for political and religious autocracy; but it 
is a harder position to maintain. In the latter case, it is an easier 
position to maintain, but it has democratic implications. We shall 
see some of these implications becoming explicit in Lamennais, 
Ballanche, and Bautain. 


II 


CATHOLIC THOUGHT IN FRANCE UNDER THE RESTORATION: 
‘THE LIBERALIZING OF TRADITIONALISM 


‘The chief works of de Bonald and of de Maistre appeared not 
during the Empire, but during the early years of the Restoration. 
It was then that their influence began to be felt; for all Europe 
was swept by a wave of political and religious reaction, and clutched 
eagerly at their theories to justify itself. But side by side with 
these bitterly reactionary writings appeared writings of another 
temper, coming from a younger and more forward-looking gen- 
eration, repeating much the same doctrines, but in a more moderate 

For de Maistre’s acknowledgement * For a case in point, see sbid., I, 105- 


of this change in de Bonald’s attitude, 106. 
see ibid., I, 149, note 2. 


INTRODUCTION 17 


and conciliatory tone. The most noteworthy of these younger 
writers were Lamennais and Ballanche. 

Not that the initial impression they created was one of modera- 
tion or conciliation! Never was such a bomb-shell hurled by the 
theocratic party into the camp of the enemy as when the first volume 
of Lamennais’s Essai sur DPindifférence en matiére de religion 
appeared in 1818! Coming at a time when the Catholic clergy 
seemed sunk in intellectual torpor, this vigorous book, written by 
an obscure Breton priest, created a most startling impression. 


One hundred fourteen years [writes Lacordaire] had passed over the 
tomb of Bossuet; seventy-six over that of Massillon. For seventy-six 
years, then, 0 Catholic priest in France had obtained renown as a writer 
or as @ great man. . . . Enthusiasm and gratitude knew no bounds; truth 
had been waiting so long for a champion! In a single day, M. de la 
Mennais, unknown yesterday, found himself invested with the mantle 
( puissance) of Bossuet.** 


Frayssinous, then in the midst of his second series of conferences, 
perceived that a greater than he was at hand. ‘‘He must increase 
and I must decrease,” he is reported to have said. De Bonald 
and de Maistre sought to ally themselves with Lamennais, and 
collaborated with him in the Conservateur. The fame of the 
Essai spread all over the Continent; a little later, it was recounted 
that Pope Leo XII had set up just two objects on the wall of his 
cabinet, opposite the crucifix: the image of the Holy Virgin, and 
the portrait of Lamennais! 

What was the argument which created so much stir? It may 
be summed up in the striking phrase with which the second chapter 
opens: “QOne finds Religion near the cradle of all peoples, as one 
finds Philosophy near their tomb.” The principle of Religion, 
dependence upon and subjection to a higher power, is at the founda- 
tion of every stable social order; the principle of Philosophy, the 
self-sufficiency of the individual reason, is the very essence of 
anarchy. Hence, whenever the influence of Religion is weakened 
by the fatal admission of the principle of free discussion, the seeds 
of the destruction of society are sown, since the willingness to sub- 


"4 Considérations sur la systéme de M. 
de la Mennais, 35. 


18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


mit to authority is sure to diminish and disappear. Once grant 
this, and you must embrace Ultramontane Catholicism; for, if 
you believe in the social utility of religion and yet do not believe 
in its truth, you are sure to destroy its social utility. The people 
soon detect the hypocrisy of those rulers who attempt to impose 
a faith they do not sincerely feel. If, therefore, both rulers and 
people must be sincerely religious if society is not to perish, what 
then? ‘They can embrace neither natural religion nor Protestant- 
ism, for both admit the destructive principle of free discussion. 
Therefore they must submit themselves to the supreme spiritual 
authority of the Pope. And, as Lamennais himself later summed 
up the remainder of the argument, 


Whoever separates himself from the Catholic Church is necessarily 
either a heretic, a deist, or an atheist. . . . The heretic, the deist, and 
the atheist, starting from a common principle, the sovereignty of the 
human reason, suppose that every man, all faith and authority set aside, 
must find the truth by his unaided reason, or, what is the same thing, 
with the aid of Scripture interpreted by the unaided reason. . . . This 
principle necessarily leads the consistent heretic to deism, the deist to 
atheism, the atheist to absolute scepticism.”° 


The epistemological part of the argument, here hinted at, was 
not completely worked out in the first volume, which stressed the 
argument from social utility. 


/ 


Europe [says Lacordaire] was waiting for the continuation of the 
work.—The author had as yet merely established the importance and 
necessity of faith. . . . What was the authority that must regulate the 
human reason? .. . After two years of expectation, the second volume 
of the Essai was published. Nothing could depict the surprise it pro- 
duced. From the heights of the classic defence of the faith, M. de la 
Mennais had descended to the arid discussions of philosophy. The 


solution he proposed violently divided men’s minds.*° 


A storm of criticism arose both from the freethinkers and from 
the theologians; but de Bonald wrote Lamennais to “let all those 
frogs croak,” de Maistre advised him not to take the trouble to reply, 
and a multitude of young priests embraced the new doctrine en- 
thusiastically, as a sort of gospel. It was current talk that only 


25 , ° 
Défence de Essai, chap. x. *® Loc. cit. 


INTRODUCTION “19 


the opposition of the French Government robbed him of being 
awarded the red hat.” 

In this second volume, Lamennais attacks all philosophers, even 
religious philosophers, who “claim that each man, considered in- 
dividually and without relation to his fellows, may find certitude 
in himself.”°* Passing in review all the chief theories of knowl- 
edge—empiricism, idealism, and rationalism or dogmatism—he 
urges that neither the sense-perceptions nor the “internal impres- 
sions’ nor the.reasonings of the individual in his solitude, apart 
from the confirmatory testimony of his fellows, can lead to cer- 
titude. All individualistic theories of knowledge, as a matter of 
fact, lead to absolute skepticism, as might be expected; for the 
whole process of abstracting oneself from society and tradition of 
which Descartes’ philosophical self-discipline is the classic example, 
is essentially absurd and unnatural. Philosophy’s whole method of 
truth-seeking is wrong, thinks Lamennais; and so he passes a sweep- 
ing condemnation on all philosophy. ‘“The object of philosophy is 
the quest of truth, and almost all the errors which are in the world, 


and especially the most dangerous ones, are born of this vain 


quest.”’*° 


But though philosophy logically leads to skepticism, we are not 


skeptics. 


Nature does not permit it; she forces us to have faith [says Lamennais]. 
Man is in a state of natural impotence to demonstrate any truth fully, 
and an equal impotence to refuse to admit certain truths... all the 
truths necessary to our conservation, all the truths whereon the ordinary 
intercourse of life and the practice of the indispensable arts and crafts 
are founded. We believe invincibly that there exist bodies endowed 
with certain properties, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that when we 
put seed in the ground it will render a harvest. . . . Try to deny the 
rightfulness of this faith and you prove it by denying it, since to deny it 
you would have to speak, and consequently believe in speech, believe in 
its linkage with our thought and the thought of others, believe in your 
own existence and the existence of other men, etc., etc.°° 


Here, thinks Lamennais, in this irresistible and almost instinctive 


* Ferraz, Traditionalisme et Ultramon- ” Défence, chap. 11, opening sentence. 
tanisme, 209-210. ° Essai, II, 83, 84. 
* Essai, I, 91, 92. 


20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


tendency to believe certain things—-many of them unprovable—is 
a source of knowledge far more reliable than either reason or the 
senses. It is a tendency, be it noted, which does not vary from 
individual to individual, but is inherent in man as man, and can- 
not be destroyed without destroying the human intelligence, and 
life itself. May we not rightly assume that it is rooted in the 
fact that each creature is equipped, in the very moment of its crea- 
tion, with the knowledge of certain primal truths, without which 
it could not exist? ‘“The primal truths it has received constituting 
its life,” says Lamennais, “‘it is as impossible for it not to admit 
them or not to believe in them, as not to have been created; and, 
if it could conquer this vital faith, it would possess the power of 
sel f-annihilation.””** 

But how are we to recognize these primal truths which we can- 
not help believing? how distinguish them from the fantasies of 
the individual reason? In a word, by the criterion of universality 
or common consent. “Since there is no intellectual life possible 
without the knowledge of these truths,’ says Lamennais, “they 
should be found in all intelligences, and are to be recognized by 
this characteristic of universality.”°** After all, when you come 
to think it over, common consent, or social corroboration, is the 
test we all apply when we are seeking to distinguish between hallu- 
cinations and matters of fact. .Insanity consists precisely in the 
rejection of this social test of truth, and the persistent clinging to 
individual impressions and notions which are not shared by our 
fellows. When, therefore, you wish to test the truth of a given 
belief, do not reason about it, or attempt to test 1t in your own 
private experience, but consult the testimony of your fellows. If 
they unanimously agree, then you will have reached the highest 
possible degree of certainty with regard to that belief. If the 
individual human reason is untrustworthy, the general, collective, 
universal human reason is not. What all men irresistibly believe, 
is certainly true, because divinely implanted in their very natures. 

What of the truth of the Christian religion and the authority 
of the Catholic Church, when tested by this standard of universal 
acceptance and common consent? Here the doctrine of Lamen- 


* Défence, chap. x. ® Ibid. 


INTRODUCTION nA! 


nais allies itself with the Traditionalist scheme, but emphasizes 
certain considerations which had only been hinted at by de Bonald 
and de Maistre.** As his predecessors had argued from the exist- 
ence of parallel words in all tongues to the existence of a primitive 
universal tongue, Lamennais argues from the many similarities 
which can be traced between all religions to the existence of a 
primitive universal religion, of which all religions are more or 
less degenerate forms. De Maistre had said, ‘The ancient tradi- 
tions are all true; the whole of paganism is only a system of truths 
which it suffices to set in their place.” Lamennais works this out 
at length, finding parallels to Christianity everywhere. 

That there can be but one true religion, and that this religion 
is indispensable to salvation, is evident @ priori from the definition 
of religion: the ensemble of the relations which exist between 
God and man, between Creator and creature. These relations are 
necessary, hence there can be but one true conception of them; 
they are constitutive of our nature, hence any departure from the 
one true religion means eventual destruction. Breaking of rela- 
tions with the physical world means physical death; breaking of 
relations with society, and through society with God, means moral 
death. 

But which is the true religion? As we have shown, it cannot 
be discerned by the individual reason—which at once eliminates 
natural religion—but only by the authority of the universal con- 
sent of mankind. Where shall we look for it except in the Catholic 
Church? Surely not in the Protestant sects, which are only 
branches of the Catholic Church, blasted by the ravages of indi- 
vidual reason. Not in Judaism either; for apart from certain 
universally accepted principles common to all religion, it is marked 
by an abundance of special rites and customs which have never 
had more than a local significance. Not in the ethnic faiths; they 
are to be regarded as variant and more or less degenerate forms of 
the one true religion. Lamennais takes great pains to minimize 
the differences between Catholicism and paganism. Paganism is 
not a unified system like Catholicism, and hence is somewhat de- 


* Besides the influence of the two great briand, and that of the Scotch realism 
Traditionalists, there is clearly to be seen _ popularized by Royer-Collard. 
in Lamennais the influence of Chateau- 


wie THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


generate; but it is unjust to call it polytheistic or idolatrous. “The 
worship of lesser “gods” is not inconsistent with the worship of a 
supreme God—witness the primacy of Zeus—but is merely a cor- 
ruption of the doctrine of the Mediator. What we call idolatry, 
says Lamennais, was simply “the worship of good and evil spirits 
and the worship of men distinguished by striking qualities or 
venerated for their good deeds; that is, at bottom, the worship of 
angels and the worship of saints.” As for the Oriental religions, 
there are to be discerned in all of them the same fundamental 
doctrines. The Brahm of the Hindus, the Tao of the Chinese, 
the Knef of the Egyptians, all represent a supreme God identical 
with the Christian God. Belief in immortality, in the moral law, 
in the Fall, in the Incarnation, in the efficacity of worship and 
sacrifice, are universally found. ‘The true and universal religion 
is what, therefore? Not any one religion, but the universal ele- 
ment in all religions, the universal faith of the human species, 
which is found in a fragmentary form in all places and all times, 
but has been called Christianity since Christ came in the flesh. 
The authority of the Catholic Church rests upon the fact that it is 
the heir of all human tradition, and teaches a completely compre- 
hensive and universal faith. “The universal human reason speaks 
through the Pope.** How plausible this contention is, may perhaps 
be indicated by the recent remark of a Protestant student of com- 
parative religion: that Catholicism has absorbed so many diverse 
elements in its long development that it has become the epitome of 
the whole history of religions, from primitive folk-religion up.” 
‘The reader may perhaps observe that although this argument is 
used to support the authority of the Pope and in general that of 
the Powers that Be, it is susceptible of being given quite a different 
twist. For, if all authority rests in the last analysis upon that of 
the universal human reason, the authority of kings and prelates, 
being only a delegated authority, may be disputed when it chances 
to come into conflict with “common sense” or “public opinion.” 
Lamennais did not yet draw these consequences from his position; 
but his enemies perceived them, and he himself was destined to 
** For this whole doctrine see the Essai, * Heiler, Wesen des Katholizismus. 


Part III, chap. vii1; Part IV, chaps. 11 
and tv. 


INTRODUCTION 23 


draw them not many years later, when changed political circum- 
stances and the condemnation of Rome brought him into conflict 
with both kings and prelates as a champion of humanity and democ- 
racy. Even in the £ssaz, a certain democratic flavor may be de- 
tected in those passages where he contrasts the soundness of the 
religious instincts of the people with the corruption and skepticism 
of the ruling classes, and points out that the disintegration of the 
social order usually proceeds from the top down.** And from 
still another point of view the Essai seems to contain the seeds of 
the dissolution of absolutism: it is admitted that the universal re- 
ligion, one in its essence, has taken different forms in different 
times and places. If that is so, may it not be expected to take new 
forms in the future, and may not the effort to maintain an un- 
yielding conservatism in religion and politics be a mistake? That 
Traditionalism, a philosophy designed to bolster up theocracy and 
monarchy, could thus turn inside out and become the charter of 
liberalism, is a striking proof of its instability and ambiguity as a 
system. The well-known fact that Auguste Comte was largely 
indebted to the Traditionalists for some of his most characteristic 
ideas—among them that of the “Religion of Humanity’—is a 
token of the same sort. 

In the same year (1818), when Lamennais first burst into 
prominence, there appeared a more modest work which received 
comparatively little attention, but which is decidedly symptomatic 
of what we have called the “‘iberalizing of Traditionalism.” It 
was entitled “An Essay on Social Institutions in their Relations 
with the New Ideas,” and was written by Pierre-Simon Ballanche, 
an invalid recluse given to the cultivation of literature and philoso- 
phy. He had been among those who had hoped much of the 
French Revolution; and even though his experiences at the siege 
of Lyons, his native city, had bitterly disillusioned him, he had not 
ceased to believe in the possibility of progress. De Maistre’s 
Considérations sur la France had convinced him of the folly of 
the attempt to build a new social order over-night; but he still 
cherished the hope that liberty and equality might be approached 
by a process of gradual transformation. During the Empire, this 


®° See especially various phrases in chap. peuple résiste longtemps 4 influence des 
1: “Plus attaché 4 ses croyances ... le classes supérieures,” etc. 


24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


hope lay dormant; and he sought consolation in the field of litera- 
ture. Here he produced some minor works, both theoretic and 
creative, which mark him as one of the pioneers of French Roman- 
ticism. A gentle sentimentality, caught from Rousseau and 
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and from certain mystical authors as 
well, is his prevailing tone in literature and philosophy. The 
Restoration, with its stable government and liberal charter, realized 
his ideal, and aroused in him the ambition to attempt a reconcilia- 
tion of liberty and authority, stability and progress. Accordingly, 
in the book already referred to, he undertakes to sketch the history 
of mankind from this liberal-conservative point of view. 

Ballanche agrees with de Maistre in his doctrine of a primitive 
age of intuition, when divine truth was revealed to our first ances- 
tors and embodied in the traditions of the race; but he does not 
think the passing of the age of intuition and the coming of the 
age of reason any more to be regretted than the passing of child- 
hood and the coming of manhood. ‘The truth which our ancestors 
only dimly divined, we may more and more fully come to under- 
stand. In the childhood of the race, when tradition was still oral, 
it was doubtless necessary to keep it severely guarded from the 
ever-present danger of alteration, in the possession of a priestly 
caste; but the invention of writing obviated this difficulty, and the 
invention of printing has so multiplied the facilities for intercourse 
that the danger of error maintaining itself uncontradicted has be- 
come greatly lessened. ‘The fact that the authority of the guardians 
of tradition has become divided and diminished is therefore not to 
be deplored; the people as a whole will ultimately become fit to be 
its guardian. Ballanche does not mean to imply that perfect free- 
dom of discussion is desirable. Certain things like honor, patriot- 
ism, family loyalty, the duty of the individual to serve society, and 
finally the essential doctrines of religion, are not to be discussed 
as freely as more secular themes. “Social doctrines,” he says, ‘can 
never be exposed in their complete nakedness. The statue of Isis 
was covered with a triple veil: the first was raised by the neophytes; 
the second, by the priests of the sanctuary; but the third was sacred 
for all.”*’ Reverence for tradition is right, but tradition itself 
progresses like the society of which it is the life. 


7 Op. cit., chap. 1, 21. 


INTRODUCTION 25 


In thus making room in his philosophy for social and intellectual 
progress, Ballanche was stretching the framework of ‘Traditional- 
ism to the breaking-point. “To de Bonald and de Maistre, and to 
Lamennais in his earlier writings, the very notion of progress is 
anathema. ‘Io attempt to improve the social order is to find fault 
with the divine ordinances; to attempt to improve upon the wis- 
dom of the ancients and the teachings of the Church is both foolish 
and impious. When, therefore, we find a Catholic layman like 
Ballanche maintaining that war and capital punishment are both 
destined to disappear with the growth of popular intelligence and 
humanitarian feeling; still more, when we find him maintaining 
in his later work, the Palingénésie Sociale, that the dogmas of 
religion are themselves subject to the law of progress—the doctrine 
of eternal punishment, he believes, is destined eventually to be 
repudiated by the Church—we may reasonably infer from all this 
that new tendencies are afoot in Catholic circles, which will 
eventually express themselves in a totally new philosophy. 


III 


THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL SITUATION IN FRANCE IN 
1833: rHeE DECLINE OF [TRADITIONALISM AND THE 
RisE oF LIBERAL CATHOLICISM 


The Restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 had marked a further 
stage in the external rehabilitation of Catholicism begun by 
Napoleon. Under the rule of His Most Christian Majesty Louis 
XVIII, there had been consummated a solemn union of Throne 
and Altar, this time on a basis of complete mutuality. The prel- 
ates of the Church gave their unqualified support to the policies 
of the government, defending them against all the attacks of the 
Opposition parties; the government, in return, used its authority 
to carry out the will of the Church—enforcing the observance of 
Sunday, punishing acts of “sacrilege,” and suspending university 
professors who expressed unorthodox opinions. Catholicism thus 
became almost inextricably associated in the public mind with 
political Conservatism and Legitimism. ‘The Traditionalists did 
much to confirm this impression, for their defense of Catholicism 


26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


was an integral part of their defense of the whole Old Régime. 
De Bonald himself was no mere theoretician. As a member of 
the peerage, he voted for the laws suspending the liberty of the 
press and punishing seditious utterances with deportation; he re- 
peatedly opposed the teaching even of reading and writing to the 
common people, on the grounds that the extension of education 
would endanger social stability. Is it any wonder that the resent- 
ment of the people was kindled against the Church as well as 
against the State, and that the Revolution of 1830 overturned the 
Altar with the Throne?** Is it any wonder that Traditionalism 
as a method of defending the Catholic Church became increasingly 
out of date after 1830? 

For three years after the revolution, says Foisset,*? no priest 
durst appear on the street in clerical garb. “The humiliation of 
Catholicism seemed as complete as it had been in 1799. But this 
time the Church showed an unexpected ability to adjust herself to 
the new situation. Disappointed in the attempt to impose religion 
upon the French people by force, she undertook the more Christian 
enterprise of winning them to it by persuasion; and, as a preliminary 
thereto, she changed her political and philosophical creed, abjuring 
absolutism and obscurantism, and espousing more liberal and 
progressive views. 

This change of creed, so far as it really occurred, was not a 
hypocritical act of expediency; it was brought about by a little 
group of ardent enthusiasts who had already, before the Revolution, 
been chafing at the false position in which the Church was placed 
by her alliance with the State. At their head stood the Abbé de 
Lamennais himself, who had been going through a rapid process 
of evolution in his political thinking since the publication of the 
F’ssai, An Ultramontanist from the start, his primary loyalty was 
always to religious not to civil authority; and he could not but feel 
that religion was debased when used by the State for political ends. 
The ruling classes were not sincerely religious, he perceived; they 
professed and imposed religion for motives of expediency, but in 


* The pillaging of the Church of St.- sufficiently indicated the temper of the 
Germain !’Auxerrois, opposite the Louvre, _ people. 
during the brief period of the Revolution, Vie de Lacordaire, 1, 24. See the 
whole introductory chapter. 


INTRODUCTION 27 


their hearts they were unbelievers, and their unbelief flowed down, 
in spite of all laws against heresy, through the whole system of 
public instruction. ‘‘Society,” he charged, in a book published in 
1826,*° ‘is governed by a systematic atheism; religion is now 
simply a thing some one administers. It figures in the budget on 
the same plane with fine arts, theatres, and studs for horse-breed- 
ing.” The only way to save the youth, said Lamennais, was to 
take education out of the hands of the State and put it into the 
hands of the Church. Pending legislation of this sort, there was 
no resort but to send the children to the petits séminaires intended 
to give primary education to young candidates for the priesthood, 
and later to the Jesuit colleges, or anywhere rather than to the 
University. Great was Lamennais’s indignation when, in 1828, 
the Martignac ministry published ordinances imposing the Uni- 
versity régime upon the Jesuit colleges, and restricting the number 
of pupils to be admitted to the petits séminaires. “The next year he 
published a book entitled Des Progrés de la Révolution et de la 
Guerre contre PE glise, in which he demands “liberty” in the field 
of education—“liberty,” a new war-cry on Catholic lips! To be 
sure, he takes great pains to distinguish his attitude from that of 
the out-and-out liberals who stood for the ideals of the French 
Revolution; and he says that in the early period of human history, 
when tradition had not yet suffered corruption, it was proper to 
deny the right of liberty of discussion; but “when a split already 
exists, when beliefs are divided, and innumerable opinions have 
succeeded the ancient faith, then unity can be reborn only at the 
issue of a free combat.” As Catholics, he says, we can associate 
neither with the liberals nor with the conservatives; we form a 
group by ourselves, and need to become self-conscious, and to 
strengthen our intellectual position by a revival of higher education 
for the clergy, who are only too rightfully accused of being behind 
the times. This book became the charter of French Liberal 
Catholicism. 

It is permissible to question the sincerity of a liberalism so ob- 
viously based upon expediency. It should be said, however, that 
Lamennais’s political evolution did not stop here, and that associa- 


“De la Religion considérée dans ses 
rapports avec Vordre politique et civil. 


28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


tion with more thorough-going lberals rapidly changed his attitude. 
Foremost among those who thus influenced him were a brilliant 
young priest named Lacordaire, and a young nobleman, the Comte 
de Montalembert. Lacordaire was so disgusted with the reaction- 
ary tendencies of the French clergy that he thought of emigrating 
to America, and it was only because Lamennais’s sudden conversion 
to liberalism gave him new hope that he decided to remain.** 
Montalembert was the leader of a group of young Catholics who 
were imbued with revolutionary ideas, and were on intimate terms 
with members of the Liberal party. If Lamennais was interested 
in nothing more than liberty for the’ Church, they were sincerely 
interested in liberty for all. “These three men became the chief 
collaborators in a Liberal Catholic periodical known as L’Avenir, 
which began to appear shortly after the revolution of 1830, and 
which raised a tremendous storm of mingled applause and dissent. 

To analyze the political doctrines of this periodical, or to follow 
the fortunes of its editors, does not come within our province. 
Suffice it to say that, if the impetuous Lamennais felt compelled 
to cut himself off from the Church on account of the stubborn 
opposition he encountered, the movement of thought which he 
initiated survived his excommunication. Lacordaire and Montal- 
embert, ably seconded by men like Ozanam, Maret, and the Vicomte 
de Melun, succeeded so well in convincing the people that Christ- 
ianity went hand in hand with liberty and democracy, that in 1848 
the revolutionaries regarded the clergy as their natural allies, and 
many black-robed figures were to be seen in the Constituant 
Assembly. L’Ere Nouvelle, published during the Second Republic 
by Lacordaire, Ozanam, and Maret, repeated the success of 
L’ Avenir, and seemed indeed to be a harbinger of a new era when 
Catholicism should be completely reconciled with modern social 
and political ideals.*” Engulfed for a time in the wave of reaction 
that inundated France during the period of the Second Empire, the 
Liberal Catholic movement still persisted as an undercurrent, and 
sprang once more into prominence late in the century, when Leo 


* Lacordaire’s temper may be sufficient- “On the social program of the Liberal 
ly indicated by a bom mot of his which Catholics of ?48, and the reasons for its 
his enemies were fond of quoting against failure, see Catholicism and the Second 
him: “I hope to die a penitent Christian French Republic, by Ross Collins, Col- 
and an impenitent liberal.” umbia University Press, 1923. 


INTRODUCTION 29 


XIII began to show democratic sympathies. On its social and 
political side, Liberal Catholicism is still very much alive—witness 
M. Marc Sangnier and the Ligue Nationale de la Démocratie— 
and this is certainly one of the reasons why Catholicism, however 
it may be scorned by the intellectuals, is so deeply rooted to-day in 
the affections of the common people of France. 

When Lacordaire spoke of himself as a “liberal,” he meant 
primarily that he was a political liberal. In general, the Liberal 
Catholics of *30 and 748, like their modern descendants, had very 
little theological liberalism about them. ‘Theological and political 
liberalism do not always go together, as every New Englander 
knows. The man who is strongly influenced by modern social 
ideals may be very little influenced by modern science and philoso- 
phy, and vice versa. Yet there were a few of the Liberal Catholics, 
such as Maret, who were liberal in both senses—Lamennais himself, 
after his separation from the Church, became a theological radical 
as well as a political revolutionary—and there were still others who, 
while only mildly interested in the political program of their asso- 
ciates, were vitally concerned with the problem of restating the 
Catholic faith in terms acceptable to the intelligentsia. It is upon 
this small but most significant group of theological liberals that 
We are to center our attention. ‘Their effort was, in brief, to 
bring the defense of the faith up to date by adjusting it to the 
new philosophical situation which had developed since 1800. If 
we are to understand their program, we must first understand that 
situation. 

In 1800, the prevailing philosophical tendency in France, out- 
side the Church, was the “‘Sensualism” of Condillac, which, in the 
hands of Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, and others, had taken on a 
strongly materialistic tinge. In the presence of this philosophy, 
Christian apologists naturally conceived their task to be either to 
defend spiritualism against materialism (as Frayssinous did), or to 
wage war upon philosophy in general, denying its right to exist 
(as the Traditionalists did), or to appeal to the heart from the 
decision of the head (as did Chateaubriand). 

Very early in the century, however, a defection took place from 
the ranks of the school of Condillac, which marked the beginning 
of a general reaction against eighteenth-century philosophy—a re- 


30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


action as complete and dramatic as any which is recorded in the 
history of modern philosophy. Laromiguiére began the defection 
by making a sort of Kantian distinction between sensations and 
ideas, the latter constituting the form of experience, the former 
only its matter. Maine de Biran, one of the ablest of the followers 
of Condillac, passed over by a series of cautious steps, each based 
on more careful psychological analysis than the last, to a thorough- 
going idealism. Even Cabanis, in his Lettre sur les causes finales, 
made concessions fatal to materialism. 

In its divided state, the school of Condillac could offer no 
effective resistance to the vigorous attacks which Royer-Collard, 
who became professor at the Sorbonne in 1809, at once began to 
make upon it in behalf of the Scotch realistic philosophy. Still less 
could it withstand the flood of German influence which began to 
stream in as soon as peace was restored to Europe. Mme. de 
Staél’s De ? Allemagne, suppressed in 1810, appeared in 1814, and 
made a great impression. Victor Cousin, after following Royer- 
Collard for a time, made a trip to Germany, and became an ardent 
devotee of German Idealism. At the period we are considering 
(1833), the Eclecticism of Cousin was all the rage. Its only 
serious rival was the social philosophy of Saint-Simon. Both these 
philosophies were religious, not to say theological, in tone. Saint- 
Simon heralded the coming of a “new Christianity”; Cousin seemed 
continually trying to go the theologians one better: as one wag 
expressed it, when the theologians spoke of the Holy Trinity, Cousin 
always spoke of the Most.Holy Trinity. For the moment, then, 
philosophy was the friend, not the enemy of religion.” 

Had the Catholics but realized it, their task was now much 
simplified: they had no longer to defend spiritualism against ma- 
terialism, or theism against atheism; they had only to defend 
Catholic Christianity as the highest type of religion. It was the 
Golden Age of Romanticism in France; Victor Hugo had just 
produced his first dramas and George Sand her first novels. A 
spirit of ardent if somewhat sentimental idealism pervaded the 


“A less positively friendly philosophy ence to his name. Damiron, in the 1835 
was that of Auguste Comte, then in its edition of his Essai, added a couple of 
first phase. But, strange to say, one may paragraphs on Comte, but treated him as 
search the philosophical literature of the a typical Saint-Simonian! 
period through, and find hardly a refer- 


INTRODUCTION 31 


youth. They were much given to introspection, to brooding over 
the problem of human destiny, and speculating about the Key to 
the Great Mystery. The mal de siécle often expressed itself in 
the form of a yearning after the Infinite, and a sense of dissatis- 
faction with all things finite. “The besoin de croire, the need to 
believe, in order to reach a state of mental peace and moral power, 
was pretty universally recognized; and the relativism of the earlier 
part of the century had given way to the conviction that absolute 
truth existed, and might be found. ‘The great question was merely: 
“Where is absolute truth to be found?” Was it to be found in 
one specific religion, like Christianity, or was it revealed, in various 
stages of development, in all religions and all philosophies, marching 
on toward a final synthesis which one might already glimpse? 
Was Christianity final, or was it but a passing form of the absolute 
religion? 

For the most part, the Catholic clergy did little to satisfy the 
religious hunger of the youth. ‘They could not understand it; the 
whole world of thought from which it sprang was foreign to 
them. At the seminaries, philosophy was still discussed in Scholastic 
Latin; and thought had not moved since the days of Bossuet, when 
a certain tinge of Cartesian rationalism had been imparted to French 
Scholasticism. The younger clergy were most of them Tradition- 
alists of one sort or another; they cherished the Traditionalist 
prejudice against all philosophy. 

The religious periodicals did show a decided renewal of interest 
in intellectual problems. The Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 
founded in 1830 by Augustin Bonnetty, and the Revue Européenne, 
founded a year later, contained many able articles; but the Tra- 
ditionalist hypothesis of a primitive revelation filled the whole hori- 
zon. ‘“‘Are Champollion’s discoveries in Egypt likely to confirm 
the truth of the Biblical account of the Exodus? What have geol- 
ogy and comparative philology to say in confirmation of the Book 
of Genesis and the theory of a single original tradition? What is 
the bearing of comparative religion upon the Primitive Revelation 
theory? What light does more recent history cast on the civilizing 
role of religion, and the destructive effect of skepticism?” Such 
questions as these are the constant themes of discussion. One might 
say that the historical approach dominated the whole apologetical 
enterprise. 


32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


But where was the philosopher who could speak to the youth in 
their own language; who could meet the Eclectic philosophers on 
their own ground, and work out a Christian system that should 
be comparable with their own? Where was the man both modern 
enough and philosophical enough and Christian enough to do it? 
Mer. Frayssinous had now retreated into obscurity, discredited be- 
cause of his alliance with the Government of Louis XVIII and 
Charles X. If his second series of Conférences (1814-1822) 
had already seemed out of date by reason of the changed phil- 
osophical situation, what could be expected of him now?  Bal- 
lanche, like de Bonald, de Maistre, and Chateaubriand, was an old 
man; and his theories had little appeal to the new generation. 
Lamennais, in his seclusion at La Chénaie, surrounded by a little 
group of disciples and friends, was reported to be working on just 
such a system as was required; but the Esquisse dune Philosophie 
did not appear until some years after its author’s separation from 
the Church, and proved to be pantheistic rather than Christian. 

It was from Strasbourg, instead, that the new philosophical leader 
was destined to issue his manifesto. It came in the year 1833, in 
the shape of a trenchant essay On the Teaching of Philosophy in 
France in the. Nineteenth Century, by the Abbé Bautain, Father 
Superior of the Petit Séminaire at Strasbourg, and professor of 
philosophy in the University. In this essay, all the chief phil- 
osophical tendencies of the century were described, analyzed, and 
sharply criticized with a firmness of touch that could come only 
of intimate acquaintance with the doctrines in question, and seemed 
hardly to be expected of a priest. ‘The school of Condillac, the 
Scotch school, and the Eclectic school, were all characterized, and 
dismissed with a negative verdict; but the author was just as severe 
—perhaps a trifle more severe—in his strictures upon the loose- 
knit thinking of Lamennais, and, above all, upon the arid Schol- 
asticism of the seminaries. In place of all these, he proposed to 
develop a new Christian philosophy more in harmony with the 
interests and longings of the modern man. ‘The book aroused 
great interest all over the Continent. 

The following year, Bautain again attracted much attention by 
his Reflections on the Institution of the Religious Conférences at 
Paris, The conferences in question were the Conférences of 


INTRODUCTION 33 


Notre-Dame, soon to be made famous by the genius of Lacordaire. 
Mer. Quélen, Archbishop of Paris, had recently been approached 
by Frédéric Ozanam with a petition bearing the signatures of 
several hundred Parisian students, who asked that arrangements 
be made for a series of addresses designed to meet the intellectual 
problems of the younger generation more directly and frankly than 
was the custom. ‘The students ventured to suggest the names of 
two men whom they thought capable of giving such a series of 
addresses: Lacordaire and Bautain.** Mer. Quélen announced 
that their request would be granted at the coming Lenten season; 
he himself would inaugurate the series. One fancies that the 
pleasure of the students at the granting of their request was some- 
what dampened by the prospect of having to listen to the Arch- 
bishop: he was a Legitimist of the old school, and wholly out of 
sympathy with the Liberal Catholic movement. Bautain, at any 
rate, felt that the ecclesiastical authorities were in danger of fail- 
ing to meet the real needs of the students; and so, in a series of 
brilliant articles in the Univers Religieux, he described the student 
mind as it really was, and pointed out the folly of attempting to 
approach young Romanticists and young pantheists with a super- 
annuated apologetic designed to meet the difficulties of eighteenth- 
century materialists and atheists. 

The young men of to-day are not atheists, he insists. They 
will admit that without God “nothing is explicable in the universe. 
. . . There is neither science, nor ethics, nor society possible with- 
out that principle.” Do not suppose, however, that they mean by 
this what would have been meant in the eighteenth century. These 
young men are neither theists nor deists, nor yet pantheists in the 
Spinozistic sense; they are idealistic pantheists, after the German 
style, believing in a “God who lives in Nature and in man, who 
is their principle and substance, who posits and preserves them 
both, by his development and his manifestation.” With them, the 
old arguments aimed against materialism are out of place; 


they are nearer [says Bautain] to an excess of spiritualism in speculation. 
They almost doubt the existence of matter, and you will greatly oblige 
them by furnishing them with good reasons for granting it. . . . As for 


“De Régny, L’Abbé Bautain, 192-195. 


34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


the immortality of the soul, soyez tranquille: they grant it to the extent 
of confusing it with eternity, and man lacks little of being God for 
them. It is the same with free-will, which we have tried to reinstate, 
in opposition to fatalism, by so many reasonings. They grant it, they 
insist upon it to the point of independence, only too happy if you 
succeed in convincing them that human free-will is not autonomy. 

[Do not argue with them about the necessity of revelation; they ‘ad 
revelation everywhere. If you try to prove the Incarnation to them, 
they protest] that one incarnation is not enough; that they admit ten, 
twenty, thirty of them like the Hindus; and that even, to look at it 
philosophically, the life of man and of the world is one continuous. 
incarnation of divinity. . . . In a word, the disposition of the French 
youth is not so much to reject religion as to admit all the religions, 
Christianity along with the rest, so as to work them all over in the alembic 
of criticism .. . to shape little by little with the materials furnished 
by mankind the great structure of a philosophical religion . . . or rather 


to create the system of true philosophy, which will enable the peoples 
of the future to dispense with all religion! *° 


Who was this young Abbé, with the air of a trained philosopher, 
and so intimately acquainted with the student mind? | There were 
doubtless many who asked themselves that question, as they read 
these articles. Some, indeed, seemed to feel that he was trying 
to read a lesson to the Archbishop,*® and asked who he was to 
attempt to dictate to his superiors. Others, noting how he assailed 
with equal vehemence all the prevailing philosophical tendencies, 
asked in some alarm who this sceptic in the bosom of the Church 
might be—this destructive critic, who dared to lay a profane hand 
upon the time-honored scholastic system itself. It was known 
that on a recent trip to Paris he had been received ‘“‘with kindness 
and favor mingled with reserve” by Mgr. Quélen; that Victor 
Cousin had offered him a chair in the Faculty at the Sorbonne, 
which he had refused; that he had greatly impressed the Parisian 
students with a series of addresses at the FEglise Saint-Roch.“" 
Rumor, too, wove about his figure a certain glamor of romance. 
It was said that he was fabulously learned, and a doctor in all the 
five Faculties; that Hegel had pronounced him a greater con- 
structive thinker than Cousin; that he was under the influence of 
an Alsatian saint, prophetess, and savant, Mlle. Humann, and a 


*® Réflexions, 29-34. “ Thid., 192-195. 
“De Régny, L’Abbé Bautain, 195. 


INTRODUCTION 35 


member of her esoteric band of mystic enthusiasts; that he was 
planning to drive the scholastic philosophy from all the seminaries 
of France, and replace it with his own philosophy; that although 
he had bitter antagonists among the clergy, who openly accused 
him of heresy, he was protected and assured of ecclesiastical ad- 
vancement by powerful friends in high political position.*® 

How much there was in these rumors, and what manner of man 
it was who inspired them, we shall shortly inquire; but before we 
turn our attention to the Abbé Bautain and his philosophy, it will 
be necessary for us to glance a moment at the chief tendencies 
of Catholic thought in Germany at this period. It was from 
Strasbourg that this new philosopher hailed; and nothing that hails 
from Strasbourg can be understood in terms of French antecedents 
alone. Were we to forget this fact, we should be tempted to look 
upon Bautain as a Carlylian hero, bursting in upon the scene like 
a bolt from the blue, and altering the course of French Catholic 
thought by sheer force of genius. Something indeed does seem 
to burst in at this point and divert the stream of French Catholic 
thought; Bautain’s appearance marks the beginning of a new and 
distinctive tendency, which continues down to our day; but it would 
be wrong to represent our philosopher in the guise of an intellectual 
Hercules, diverting the river of thought single-handed. We shall 
have a more just appreciation of his undoubted originality if 
we recognize at the start that his philosophy owes quite as much 
to German Romanticism as it does to French ‘Traditionalism. 
Through Bautain,*® the stream of German Catholic thought, which 
had been following its own separate course and developing charac- 
teristics of its own since the beginning of the century, was blended 
and Humann, minister of finance, brother 


of Mlle. Humann. 
“T say “through Bautain,” because he 


“For some of these rumors and in- 
sinuations, see Campaux, Le philosophe 
de Strasbourg: Etude sur ?Abbé Bautain 


et son école, Nancy, 1876, 36, 41, 42. 
See also the anonymous book, De len- 
seignement philosophique de M. DPAbbé 
Bautain, Paris, 1834, 630. Bautain held 
three doctorates, not five: doctor és 
lettres, 1816; doctor of medicine, 1826; 
doctor of theology, 1835 (honorary de- 
gree from Tiibingen). The Hegel anec- 
dote is given later. The powerful 
friends referred to are Guizot, Cousin, 


was the first distinguished French Catho- 
lic thinker to be deeply influenced by . 
German Catholic thought; but of course 
his writings were not the sole avenue 
through which German influences came 
into French Catholic thought at this 
period. The Revue Européenne frequently 
published articles by Baader and other Ger- 
man Catholic thinkers, and had a regular 
staff correspondent stationed at Munich. 


36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


once more with the stream of French Catholic thought, and out 
of the confluence of these two streams there issued a new phil- 
osophical tendency, which, like all things Alsatian, seemed a bit 
strange and foreign both to the French and to the Germans. 


IV 


Marin CurRENTS IN GERMAN CaTHOLIc THouGHT, 1800-1833" 


The disesteem into which not only Catholicism, but religion in 
general, had fallen at the beginning of the nineteenth century had 
been no. less noticeable in Germany than in France. When 
Schleiermacher, the father of liberal Protestant theology, published 
his famous Speeches on Religion in 1799, he addressed them to 


“the cultured among her despisers’;°* and he was forced to spar 


skilfully for an opening in order to gain a hearing at all: 


It may be an unexpected and even a marvellous undertaking [he began] 
that any one should still venture to demand . . . attention for a subject 
so entirely neglected. . . . Now especially the life of cultivated people 
is far from anything that might bear even a resemblance to religion. . . 
There was a time when you held it a mark of special courage to cast off 
partially the restraints of inherited dogma. You still were ready to 
discuss particular subjects, though it were only to efface one of those 
notions. Such a figure as religion moving gracefully, adorned in elo- 
quence, still pleased you, if only that you wished to maintain in the 
gentler sex a certain feeling for sacred things. But that time is long 
past. Piety is now no more to be spoken of. . . . I can link the interest 
I require of you to nothing but your contempt. I will ask you, there- 
fore, just to be well informed and thorough-going in your contempt.®” 


When religion was an object of contempt, Catholicism, @ fortiori, 
was beneath contempt. It was a-matter agreed upon among all 
educated men, says Goyau, that the Catholic idea was “sterile” 
and “superannuated”’: 


Their common arrogance with respect to the old religion [he says] was 
all the more striking because there was nothing affected or purposely 


See references to Werner, Schmid, * Reden iiber die Religion an die Ge- 
Goyau, Lichtenberger, and Vermeil, in 4ildeten unter ihren Verdchtern. 
Bibliography, Part I, sections 1 and 3. * QOman’s translation, London, 1893, 1, 


rR 


INTRODUCTION ou 


insolent about it: they were quite sincere in attributing to the Roman 
Church the same place in the real world which it held in their own 
esteem; they spoke of it not exactly as a hostile force, but rather as an 
archaism. ‘“Che Church of Rome,” said Herder, “is now but an ancient 
ruin, into which henceforth no new life can come.’* 


In the face of this widespread attitude, the Catholic clergy had 
themselves developed a sort of inferiority complex. Apologetically 
pruning and expurgating the teachings of the Church, so as to make 
them as little offensive as possible to the spirit of the Enlightenment, 
they had ended by rationalizing away all that was distinctive in 
their faith. In the catechisms of the day, Christianity was pre- 
sented as “‘a sort of superior ethics, practically independent of 


dogma.’””* 


From the pulpit [said Staudenmaier] there still descended words, but 
not words of life. The priest had become an apostle of useful informa- 
tion; the texts concerned even the cultivation of potatoes, trees, meadows, 
grape alcohol. People left church full of stories warning them against 
drunkenness . . . telling how what had been taken for ghosts was noth- 
ing but a lot of freshly washed blankets spread out in the moonlight, 
forgotten by the maid; but they were empty of what they needed for 
the virtuous and Christian life, empty of that which leads heavenward.*° 


The story of the gradual revival of religion in Germany in 
the early nineteenth century presents many parallels to the Catholic 
renaissance in France, already described. Just as in France, it was 
the laity, not the clergy, who gave the initial push that started the 
religious landslide. Just as in France, it was the esthetic appeal 
a@ la Chateaubriand which first overcame the indifference of the 
German public and aroused their interest in religion. Just as in 
France, the movement started as something amorphous, something 
utterly unsectarian, something opposed to all set creeds and external 
codes of morality, but became rapidly Christian, and specifically 
Catholic—a phenomenon doubly astounding in the land of Luther. 

The contrast appears, however, when we note that the religious 
movement became consciously and technically philosophical in 

SGoyau, L’Allemagne religieuse. Le % Lauchert, Franz Anton Staudenmaier, 


Catholicisme, 1, 161. Freiburg, 1901, 27. 
4 Thid., 162. 


38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Germany much sooner than it did in France, and that it was not 
compromised, as in France, by being bound up with the reactionary 
movement in politics. “his latter statement needs qualification, of 
course. “The wave of political reaction which swept over Europe 
after 1815 undoubtedly worked in favor of Catholicism in Ger- 
many, as it did everywhere; and many of the leaders of the 
Catholic revival were at the same time ardent supporters of the 
Holy Alliance in its policy of suppression. Géorres, the founder 
of the Munich school, was a Jacobin in his youth—editor of a 
revolutionary sheet in Coblentz—and his conversion to Catholicism 
was in the first instance a conversion to political conservatism. 
In his Munich period, he poured forth a flood of ridicule and 
abuse upon. religious and political liberalism alike, in his Historisch- 
politische Blatter. It has even been claimed that he never became 
a sincere Catholic, but that, like the present-day “atheist Catholics” 
of the Action Francaise, he favored Catholicism for purely politi- 
cal reasons.°° However that may be, it should be insisted upon 
that men of Gorres’ type played no such leading part in the Catho- 
lic revival in Germany as did de Bonald and de Maistre in France. 
Not politicians and publicists, but philosophers, played the leading 
role in Germany. We may, in fact, dismiss the influence of © 
political reaction with this brief mention, and risk the generaliza- 
tion that the religious renaissance in Germany was due to the rise 
of Romanticism.”* 

Now the Romantic movement had three chief aspects: esthetic, 
religious, philosophical. In its esthetic aspect, it was a revolt 
against classicism in literature, art, and music; an outburst of 
impatience with set forms, sharp contours, classic restraint; a riot 
of emotionalism and individualism succeeding upon an age of 
conventionalism; expressing itself in warm colors, rich harmonies, 
odd and unusual diction; a revival of interest in the literature and 
art of the Middle Ages, whose mixture of the sublime, the gro- 
tesque, the mysterious, the miraculous, and the chivalrous was 
strangely alluring to the imagination of a sophisticated and dis- 
illusioned generation. In its religious aspect, Romanticism was a 


 Lichtenberger, Histoire des idées re- and occultism helped in his conversion. 
ligieuses en Allemagne, III, 379. The ™ Goyau, of. cit., Bk. II, chap. 1, “Ro- 
judgment is unfair. Gdérres’ mysticism mantisme et Catholicisme.” 


INTRODUCTION 39 


revolt against the cold moralism and rationalism of eighteenth- 
century orthodoxy and eighteenth-century “natural religion”; a 
sudden victory of the religion of feeling over that “religion within 
the bounds of mere reason”’* which Kant had so ably expounded; 
a revival of mediaeval mysticism and mediaeval occultism. In its 
philosophical form, Romanticism was a revolt against the ration- 
alistic epistemology and mechanistic cosmology of the eighteenth 
century; it set faith and intuition over against reason, and claimed, 
with Pascal, that “‘the heart has reasons that the reason knows not 
of”; it rejected the concept of mechanism, and universalized the 
concept of organism. It went back for sustenance and inspiration 
to the great monistic, idealistic, and pantheistic systems of the 
past—neo-Platonism, Spinozism, and Jacob Boehme’s mystic the- 
osophy—for in all these systems it glimpsed the great Idea of 
which all the dazzling philosophical speculations of the period, 
from Goethe to Hegel, are but amplifications: the idea that the 
universe is a living Organism, a manifold Whole, developing in 
Nature and in History. 

It will be seen that, in each of its three forms, Romanticism 
was favorable to religion in general and Catholicism in particular; 
yet in each case it held a hidden menace for the Catholic faith, 
if Catholicism were to accept too uncritically the aid of this new 
and unexpected ally. Romanticism might feel a certain admira- 
tion for Catholicism, it might even submit to baptism and formally 
embrace the faith; but it was not Catholic at heart. It wanted 
religion for purposes of its own, not religion for religion’s sake: 
it was in love with the gorgeous appurtenances of stately worship; 
it enjoyed the religious thrill as a new and altogether exquisite 
sensation; it taught itself to believe the dogmas of the Church, 
because without a certain degree of belief the religious thrill was 
not forthcoming—but it never took its religion in real, deadly 
earnest. 

This is particularly true of esthetic Romanticism. If we 
examine the motives which led to the veritable epidemic of con- 
versions to Catholicism which broke out among the German Iiterati 
in the early nineteenth century, we shall find that the esthetic 


® Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen des blossen Vernunft. 


40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


motive predominates. “Lhe Catholic movement among them coin- 
cided precisely with the reaction against Hellenism and _neo- 
classicism in favor of Christian painting, architecture, and litera- 
ture. “The neo-classicist view of Christian art and literature might 
be summed up in the words of Herder: “Among the bones of 
martyrs, the sound of bells and organs, censers, and prayers for 
indulgence, no Muse resides.” ‘The reaction toward Catholicism 
among the German Jiterati dates from the moment when the un- 
fairness of this judgment began to be appreciated. First came the. 
publication in 1805, of Arnim and Brentano’s” great collection of 
mediaeval Volkslieder, entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which 
inspired Eichendorff, La Motte-Fouqué, and others to return to 
mediaeval sources for poetic themes. At about the same time the 
brothers Boisserée began to make their famous collection of 
mediaeval painting and sculpture.” Then, in 1808, Friedrich 
Schlegel astonished all his friends by embracing the Catholic faith. 
The Boisserées, with whom he was personally acquainted, had 
convinced him of the superiority of Christian art over Greek art; 
his own Oriental studies had convinced him that Oriental literature 
in general, and the Bible in particular, had in it a “sense of the 
infinite” lacking in Greek literature. In his History of Ancient 
and Modern Literature, published in 1812, he presented the Bible 
as “‘a source of poetry and art which should be for our time what 
Homer had been for antiquity.” 

While public taste in Germany was thus gradually overcoming 
its distaste for Christian art and literature, a parallel movement 
was taking place in the German art-colony at Rome, hitherto the 
citadel of neo-classicism. “There, under the leadership of Fredrich 
Overbeck, a group of revolters, popularly dubbed the “Nazarenes,” 
arose, who denounced classic art as frigid and conventional, and 
extolled the spontaneity and fervid sincerity of Giotto and Fra 
Angelico. From admiring the genius of the great Italian painters, 
they were soon led to envy their faith. Without religion, they 
felt, such art was impossible; if they were to paint like Giotto 
they must believe as he did. As Overbeck put it himself, “Only 
the unceasing prayer of the heart is capable of maintaining the 


® Brentano was later converted to © Now in the Munich Pinacothek. 
Catholicism. ™ See Goyau, op. cit., I, 183-191. 


INTRODUCTION 4] 


enthusiasm of the artist. . . . Christian art means nothing but the 
full and appropriate expression . . . of a living faith, with which 
the artist must be full; and the aim of Christian art can be only 
to awake and sustain that faith in others, or to gain hearts to the 
truth through beauty.” 

‘These words of Overbeck clearly indicate the motives which 
led multitudes of young Romanticists to the Catholic faith. They 
felt the need of some religion, because they felt religion would 
supply the enthusiasm without which artistic creativity is impossible. 
Protestantism, with its stark, bare churches, and its dour depreciation 
of the esthetic side of life, was out of the question; Catholicism, 
with its architecture and stately ritual, drew them with a strange 
fascination. Even Novalis, whose background was severely Prot- 
estant, wrote a series of Hymns to the Virgin, and dreamed of a 
new religion in which Catholicism and Protestantism should be 
reconciled. It is obvious that the Catholicism of these young 
esthetes was in many cases only skin-deep. Led “to the truth 
through beauty,” they interpreted “the truth” to suit themselves. 
Mediaeval Catholicism attracted them less because it was Christian 
than because it was Latin or Teutonic. In church, their glance 
rested not upon the tortured face of the Christ upon the Crucifix, 
but upon the serene countenance of some Italian Madonna, or the 
grinning visage of some dwarfish monster, peeping from beneath 
the pulpit-stair like the genius of the Teutonic races. Suffering, 
sacrifice, and penance were foreign terms to them; their real 
religion, had they avowed it, was the cult of self-expression, self- 
development, and “union with the Infinite’—a cult whose origin, 
as we shall see, was largely extra-ecclesiastical. 

What we have called the “religious” aspect of Romanticism had 
its antecedents in a revival of mysticism which began toward the 
end of the eighteenth century. We are accustomed to think of 
the eighteenth century as a period when rationalism and moralism 
held sway; but in every rationalistic period there can be traced an 
undercurrent or counter-tendency of religious emotionalism and 
anti-intellectualism, showing that the starved and outraged instincts 

® This is precisely the idea conveyed in the Nazarenes, see Goyau, op. cit., I, 228- 


his famous painting “The Triumph of 245. 
Religion in the Arts.”” On Overbeck and 


42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


are still operative in all their force, waiting only for the moment 
when their suppressed energies shall accumulate to the exploding- 
point. So, in the very midst of the eighteenth century, we find 
little circles of congenial spirits gathering here and there in Ger- 
many to foster 1n one another the flame of mystic piety, and bid 
common defiance to the chilly atmosphere of their century. Some 
of these circles, such as the Pietistic circles founded much earlier 
by Spener and Francke, or the famous community at Herrnhut 
founded by Zinzendorf, were characterized by a somewhat narrow 
and fanatical piety, and lacked the broad cosmopolitanism which 
we associate with Romanticism. Smaller, but more significant 
from our point of view, were the esoteric groups of admirers 
gathered about such outstanding figures as Oetinger (1702-1782), 
Hamann (1730-1788), Jung-Stilling (1740-1817), the Princess 
Gallitzin (1748-1806), Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), and 
Father Sailer (1751-1832). ‘These esoteric circles were charac- 
terized by a breadth of opinion that made it possible for Catholics, 
Jews, and free-thinkers to remain the closest of friends; by a type 
of piety which harked back to the classical mystics for its inspira- 
tion; and by an interest in the occult and the marvellous, most 
unusual at that period in cultivated society. Eliminate commer- 
cialism and the “cult of success” from contemporary ‘New 
Thought,” compound it with Spiritualism and Theosophy, and you 
will have a fair idea of the atmosphere of these mystic circles. 
Then add to the influence of these mystics the influence of Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau and his “religion of feeling,” and you will 
understand what the word “religion” meant to those of the Ro- 
manticists who professed to be religious. 

It is not hard to see why mysticism and the “religion of feeling” 
played into the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The 
classical Christian mystics are most of them regularly canonized 
saints of the Roman Church, and mystic piety has always thrived 
better within the monastery than amongst the Protestant sects, 
where it has often had to struggle for its life against the rational- 
istic spirit of disputation and inquiry. Yet, on the other hand, | 
Romantic mysticism was only accidentally Catholic; and, in many 
of its aspects, it was open to grave suspicion from the Catholic 
point of view. It drew its inspiration not only from the orthodox 


INTRODUCTION 43 


mystics, but from Jewish, Hindu, and even Swedenborgian sources, 
and it fraternized scandalously with certain self-styled “prophets” 
who, though outside the pale of the Church, claimed impiously to 
have immediate insight into things divine 
to be feared in mystics. 3 





a presumption always 
Worst of all, it was infected with the 
spirit of Rousseau; and, in its tendency to identify the experience 
of the divine with the experience of deep emotion, it was often 
led to deify the grossest of our animal instincts because of the 
flood of emotion they release when stimulated. <A type of piety 
that smacked of Goethe and Jean-Paul could not but be suspect 
in the eyes of the Church—especially when it was associated with 
wild theosophical speculations. 

It is a bit difficult to dissociate the religious from the philosophi- 
cal aspect of Romanticism; for it was precisely in the mystic circles 
to which we have alluded, that the Romanticist philosophy®* was 
first elaborated. Some of these mystics, to be sure—especially 
Catholic mystics like the Princess Gallitzin—were primarily inter- 
ested in “practical mysticism,” or the culture of the devotional life; 
but there were others who felt it necessary to defend their right 
to be religious by attacking current rationalism and materialism, 
and setting up a mystic philosophy or theosophy instead. “Typical 
of these more philosophical mystics is Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, 
called “the magician of the South.”°* A Protestant pastor, re- 
spected for his noble character and zeal in the cure of souls, but 
suspected for his extravagant theosophical speculations; a savant, 
versed in mathematics, natural philosophy, anatomy, and meta- 
physics; the translator, and for a time, the exponent of Sweden- 
borg; the popularizer of Jacob Boehme—altogether, he is a most 
interesting figure. Trained in the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy, 
he early reacted against its rationalism, and set out on a life-long 
search for direct and intuitive knowledge of the divine. He cul- 





tivated the acquaintance of all 


®The reader is warned that, when I 
speak of the “Romanticist Philosophy,” 
I refer not only to the philosophy of the 
Romanticists in the narrow sense (men 
like Schleiermacher, the Schlegels, and 
Novalis) but also to the common under- 
lying concepts and tendencies of the 
whole period of the rise of post-Kantian 


who claimed such knowledge— 


Idealism. This use of the term is quite 
common in French philosophical writings. 
Cf. Bréhier’s use of it in his admirable 
little book on La Philosophie Allemande 
(Collection Payot). 

*On Oetinger, see Lichtenberger, of. 
cit., I, 256-267; see also his fascinating 
Selbsthiographie. 


44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Pietists, physicians and alchemists, learned Jews with their Cabal- 
istic lore, simple peasants like Marcus Volker, who claimed to 
possess cognitio centralis, mystics of all sorts, however unorthodox. 
Not a systematic philosopher himself, he nevertheless set in motion 
a hundred currents of thought which later combined to form the 
Romantic philosophy. Through him the influence of Jacob 
Boehme became a part of the Romantic movement, an influence 
which can be traced in all the systems of the day, including the 
Hegelian system itself. 

Philosophical Romanticism, as we have said, had two chief 
tenets: the epistemological primacy of faith and intuition, and the 
organic nature of the cosmos. Both these doctrines may be found 
in the writings of Oetinger; but it remained for later and greater 
philosophers to work them out in detail. “The Romantic view of 
faith and intuition was most completely and profoundly stated by 
Jacobi; the Romantic view of the cosmos, by Goethe, Schleier- 
macher, and Schelling. 

Jacobi’s philosophy developed out of a criticism of Kant’s Kritik 
der Reinen Vernunft. "The logical outcome of Kant’s position, 
says Jacobi, is complete solipsism; “‘pure reason” has no right to 
infer the existence of any Thing-in-itself. What then? Are we 
to decide to become skeptics? Not so, says Jacobi: we have an 
immediate certainty of the existence of an external world; if reason 
cannot prove it, so much the worse for reason! As a matter of 
fact, all rational knowledge is second-hand knowledge; for all 
proof rests back upon assumptions and intuitions which need no 
proof. Reason alone gives us an abstract, subjectivistic, deter- 
ministic view of things; the real world, the world where man is 
free and God reigns, is accessible only to a higher faculty than 
reason, which Jacobi in his earlier writings frankly calls faith. 

Jacobi was a Romanticist in his epistemology only. Monism 
and pantheism were anathema to him. Spinoza’s pantheism, with 
its absolute determinism, seemed to him to be the classical example 
of what the rationalistic “‘method of demonstration” logically leads 
to. Strangely enough, however, Jacobi was destined to play a 


® Later he confused the issue by call- Understanding (Verstand). See McGif- 
ing it Reason (Vernunft) and distin-  fert, Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 
guishing it from discursive reasoning or 114-121. 


INTRODUCTION 45 


leading role, against his will, in the repopularizing of Spinoza. 
His book on Spinoza’s system,”* although full of hostile criticism, 
did much to awaken interest in the great Jewish philosopher. His 
famous conversation with Lessing, from,whom he drew the avowal 
that he was a convinced disciple of Spinoza, caused a veritable 
furore in the learned world when it was published. From this 
time on, the influence of Spinozism grew apace among the Ro- 
manticists—although it was a “‘transmogrified” Spinozism which 
its own author might not have recognized. Professor McGiffert 
has pointed out that Herder’s little book called Gott, published in 
1787, was the prime source from which the Romanticists drew their 
interpretation of Spinoza. “Reading him in the light of the 
philosophy of Leibnitz, who substituted force for substance and 
thus broke the old dualism of thought and extension, Herder was 
able,” says McGiffert, “to preserve the monism of Spinoza’s system 
without sacrificing spiritual idealism or the reality of human indi- 
87 Thus reinterpreted, Spinozism became an appropriate 
framework into which the new scientific ideas of electrical force 
(Galvani) and vital force (Cuvier and the biological “vitalists’’ ) 
could be fitted. Partly under the influence of Herder’s Gott, and 
partly under the influence of his own scientific researches, the poet 
Goethe evolved his magnificent picture of a living, growing, 
organic universe, in which nothing is inert, and nothing merely 
mechanical, but all is athrill with hidden vital force. ‘This splen- 
did Weltanschauung—which Goethe identified with Spinoza’s— 
exercised a profound influence upon all the philosophy of the 
Romantic epoch. We are accustomed to think that Goethe put 
into the language of poetic vision ideas which he borrowed from 


viduality. 


the great philosophers of his generation; it is more likely that they 
attempted to rationalize and justify, in dull and ponderous prose, 
the intuitions that they got from him. 

It should be evident at a glance that philosophical Romanticism 
was a most dangerous ally for Roman Catholicism to adopt—more 
dangerous, on the whole, than either esthetic or religious Roman- 
ticism. On the epistemological side, Romanticism tended, to be 
sure, to circumvent the attacks of eighteenth-century rationalism 


© Uecher die Lehre des Spinoza, pub- Op. cit., 191; cf. his article in the 
lished 1785. Hibbert Journal for July, 1905. 


46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


upon Christian theology; but it did so only by abandoning rational 
argument altogether, and granting Kant’s contention that the rea- 
son is Incompetent in the noumenal realm. It was as hostile to 
Scholastic rationalism as to Voltairean rationalism; and by appeal- 
ing to immediate intuition it undermined authority, revelation, and 
dogma as well as reason. On the cosmological side, Romanticism 
put an end to eighteenth-century materialism and mechanism; but 
it led to pantheism. ‘The task of the German Catholic philosophers 
and theologians was a difficult one: to utilize what was acceptable 
in the Romanticist philosophy as a means of combatting the anti- 
religious philosophy of the eighteenth century, while rejecting those 
aspects of Romanticism which were imperilling the Catholic faith. 
‘This task they undertook with unequal success, but with uncommon 
vigor. 

At the period we are considering (1833), there were three main 
currents in German Catholic thought: “the rationalism of the 
eighteenth century, then in a state of decadence, Romantic neo- 
mysticism in full bloom, and new-style ultramontanism, fostered 
by Belgian and French propaganda, spread by the Jesuits from 
1814 on.?°* The “rationalistic’? tendency (whose rationalism 
was considerably modified by the influence of Kant) was pre- 
dominant at Freiburg and Bonn; the Romanticist tendency, at 
Munich, and to a lesser extent at Tiibingen and Vienna; the “ultra- 
montanist” tendency (whose philosophy was neo-scholastic), at 
Mayence and Strasbourg. 

The rationalistic tendency in Gant Catholic thought at this 
period is best represented by Georg Hermes (1775-1831), pro- 
fessor in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Bonn University.® 
Hermes professes to start his investigations into the truth of the 
Christian religion in a state of complete doubt—not merely pro- 
visional or hypothetical doubt, like that of Descartes, but real doubt. 
Any other attitude would be unethical: 


We ought not to wish anything to be true [he says], or, in other 
words, we ought to be without bias. We ought, during investigation, to 
detach ourselves in theory from all systems of theology and religion, in 


Vermeil, J. A. Moehler et Pécole 6-12; Werner, Gesch. der Katholischen 
catholique de Tubingue. Theologie, 405 ff, 423 ff. 
® On Hermes, see Goyau, op. cit., II, 


INTRODUCTION 47 


so far as we have not recognized them to be certainly true; they should 
all be equally valid and equally inadequate in our eyes.’° 


Hermes proposes, then, to construct a system of true religious ideas 
by first arriving ata few primary and necessary rational certainties, 
and then deducing their consequences. ‘The result, oddly enough, 
turns out to be a somewhat amputated and rationalized version of 
Catholic theology. 

This undoubtedly sounds “rationalistic”’; but the rationalism of 
Hermes differs widely from the rationalism of Descartes and the 
Aufklérung. When he says that “reason” is capable of proving 
the existence of God and the truth of the Christian religion, he 
means, not the “pure” or “‘speculative” reason, but the “practical” 
reason of Kant. With a “philosophy of concepts” he will have 
nothing to do; and for this reason he attacks the Scholastic phil- 
osophers with great vehemence. ‘The ultimate judge, both in 
morals and in theology, is conscience. Just as the truth of the 
Ten Commandments rests upon the fact that the “categorical im- 
perative” confirms them, so the assurance of God’s existence rests 
upon the fact that it is a necessary postulate of the practical reason. 
Moreover, conscience assures us that in creating the world, God 
acted with our good in mind, and not just for His own glory; that 
would have been egoistic, and conscience condemns egoism. If 
Hermes appears to rest his case on “reason,” it is because he dis- 
tinguishes between reason and understanding, Vernunft and Ver- 
stand, as Kant—and Jacobi—had done before him. Whether he 
takes Vernunft in a purely Kantian sense, or whether he stretches 
it to include “faith,” or intuition, as Jacobi did, is rather hard to 
determine. 

Apart from the possible influence of Jacobi, Hermes shows not 
a trace of Romanticism. Although he was a contemporary of 
Schelling, his works might have been written in the latter part 
of the eighteenth century. At the period we are discussing, his 
influence was very great. Even the formal condemnation of 
“Hermesianism”’ by the Pope in 1835 failed to dampen the ardor 
of his enthusiastic followers; and they continued (with the backing 
of the Prussian government) to defend his views for some years. 


™ Goyau, loc. cit. 


48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


At one remove from the tationalism of Hermes is the remarkable 
philosophical system of Anton Giinther (1783-1863), a Viennese 
priest. Like Hermes, he seeks a foundation for his philosophy that 
is beyond the reach of doubt, and he finds it, lke Descartes, in 
self-consciousness. “The J is the only mouwmenon with which I am 
acquainted; all other objects in my world are mere phenomena. I 
have a real idea of myself; I have only concepts of other objects.” 
If, therefore, I am to have a true idea of the World, I must ex- 
amine it where it impinges upon my own consciousness, and see it, 
as It were, from within. ‘The first important fact which I note, is 
that I, the knowing and willing Subject, am limited by an Object 
which is at the same time foreign to me, and my own—my body, 
with its sense-organs and sensual appetites. If, then, I am to take 
myself as the microcosm which reveals the nature of the macro- 
cosm—and if I do not do so, I am compelled to substitute concepts 
for real zdeas—I must conclude that the World, like myself, is 
composed of three substances: Spirit, Nature, and their synthesis 
in consciousness. I must conclude that there is no absolutely dead 
matter, but that Nature, seen from within, would everywhere re- 
veal that same vital urge, that same striving for self-development, 
which I find in my own physical organism and animal instincts. 
I must conclude, finally, that the World, although three in sub- 
stance, is one in form; for my body and spirit are united “formally” 
in my consciousness. But the World itself is not the ultimate 
Being; it is as finite, dependent, and imperfect as I am. It de- 
mands as its Urgrund an infinite, independent, perfect Being, God. 
God’s nature can be inferred from the World’s, as the World’s can 
be inferred from mine—not by direct analogy, however, but by 
inverse analogy. The World is der contraponirte Gott. The 
World is one in form and three in substance; God is one in sub- 
stance and three in form: Subject, Object, and their unity; 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” 

Giinther’s system was characterized by his opponents as “dual- 
istic.” It is indeed full of sharp contrasts: “idea” and “‘concept,” 


™ The distinction between Idée (ideelles 7 On Giinther, see Schmid, Wissen- 
Denken) and Begriff, corresponding to  schaftliche Richtungen, 7-12; Werner, 
Vernunft and Verstand, was already made op. cit., 452-463. 
by Hermes. 


INTRODUCTION 49 


“spirit” and “nature,” divine Spirit and human spirit, God and the 
Weltkreatur, stand sharply opposed to one another. We are nearer 
to Kant, with his “two worlds,’ than to Schelling with his 
Identitatslehre. ‘This tendency to dualism sprang largely from 
Giinther’s fear of pantheism. He felt that the Romanticist ten- 
dency to soften the contrasts between God and man, God and 
the world, would be the death of religion; and he fought Romantic 
monism with all his might. Nevertheless, in his whole philosophy 
of Nature, the influence of the Romantic concept of organism 1s 
evident; and, under the influence of this same concept, he was led, 
by the criticism of his pantheizing opponents, to blur some of his 
sharpest distinctions. There is, he admitted, but one Absolute Be- 
ing, God. If we assert that the World is independent of God, 
we do not mean that it exists in and through itself (durch sich), 
but only that it has a life of its own, by and for itself (fiir sich). 
It is not separate from God guoad substantiam, but only quoad 
phaenomenon. ‘Thus, after starting with Descartes, Giinther ended 
at a point none too remote from contemporary Idealism. He was 
known among his many admirers, not altogether inappropriately, 
aemethes Catholic, Hecel,7 

The school of Bonn and the school of Vienna represent the 
declining influence of the Enlightenment. Even in them, the in- 
fluence of Romanticism can be traced here and there; but, if we 
wish to see the full effect of Romanticism upon German Catholic 
thought, we shall have to turn our attention to the school of 
Munich. 

“Munich,” says Goyau, “thanks to Schelling and thanks to 
Baader, was the only capital city in Germany where philosophical 
speculation passed as an auxiliary of the Roman faith.”"* Not 
that these two men created the “school of Munich”; they were 
only two stars in the galaxy of celebrities that Joseph Gérres had 
gathered about his “Round Table”: Brentano and the brothers 
Boisserée, Romanticists of the esthetic type; Windischmann, 
Déllinger, and other scholarly professors; Gérres himself, and 
other noted publicists; “literary men, artists, jurists, theologians, 
Romanticists of yesterday and parliamentarians of to-morrow el- 


FOS. crip 11, 35. 


50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


bowed each other and associated with each other there for over 
twenty years.”"* The reputation of the school of Munich was 
European; one always made it a point to pass through Munich 
when returning from Rome. Lamennais, Cardinal Wiseman, and 
many other eminent foreigners graced the Round ‘Table with their 
presence for longer or shorter periods. Nevertheless, without 
Baader and Schelling, the School of Munich would have lost more 
than half its lustre. In their brilliant and daring speculations, 
the Romantic tendency in Catholic thought, nowhere more domi- 
nant than at Munich, found its complete and most untrammelled 
expression. . 

Franz Xaver von Baader (1765-1841) belongs to that group 
of cosmopolitan mystics out of which what we have called the 
“religious Romanticism” of the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury took its rise. Odectinger and Saint-Martin influenced him 
deeply; Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme were his favorite au- 
thors. Although a Catholic by training and preference, he had 
read far less of the Fathers and the Scholastics than of Medicine, 
chemistry, modern philosophy, and Cabalistic lore. He spent some 
years in a series of futile negotiations with certain Russian high 
officials, looking towards the reunion of the Eastern and Western 
Churches; he hoped that the reconciliation of Catholicism and 
Protestantism might eventually be effected; and, although he died 
a Catholic, he sacrificed his popularity in the last years of his life 
by inveighing against the “dictatorship of the Papacy,” which 
seemed to him to be the great obstacle to Church unity. Essentially 
a moderate and a liberal, he was equally opposed to “‘Revolution” 
and to “Stagnation,” in the political as well as in the religious 
sphere; he looked upon the Encyclopedists and the Jesuits with 
equal abomination. ‘To reconcile politics with religion, religion 
with science, reason with faith, freedom with authority, pantheism 
with theism, naturalism with supernaturalism—these were a few 
of his ambitions. 

Baader’s system—for he had a clear, consistent system, in spite 
of the fact that he left behind him nothing but scattered essays 
and oracular aphorisms’’—has been described as Relative Super- 


4 Op. cit., II, 89. lished by his pupil Hoffman, Leipzig, 
"His works were collected and pub- 1851. 


INTRODUCTION 51 


naturalism. ‘The term is exact."® Reality, according to Baader, 
is arranged in a series of “regions” or “circles,” which stand. to 
one another in a relation of “higher” to “lower,” or, more graphi- 
cally, are included one within the other like a series of concentric 
circles. Each one of these regions draws its life from the next 
above, and its nourishment from the next below; each is “super- 
natural” and mysterious when viewed from below, but natural 
and comprehensible when viewed from above. "Thus man is a 
supernatural being to the animals, but the animals are quite com- 
prehensible to man, for their narrower circle of life is included 
in his wider. The widest and highest region, the all-inclusive 
sphere, is that of the Divine Life, from which all life is derived. 
This region is supernatural to us, as our human region is super- 
natural to all lower regions. 

Ideally, each creature stands in an “‘organic” or “dynamic” rela- 
tion of free and docile subordination to the Divine Life as it flows 
down from the superior regions. When it thus opens itself re- 
ceptively to superior influences, a germ of higher life is awakened 
within it, and begins to push up blindly toward a higher region, 
like a seedling quickened by the rays of the sun. This is its second 
or supernatural birth. But this higher life of harmony with the 
Divine is possible only through self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness; 
and the universal law of polarity always makes it possible that the 
creature may affirm itself instead of denying itself, may attempt 
to live by its own powers instead of relating itself to higher powers, 
and so cut itself off from its Creator. Not that it is possible to 
live apart from God! Whether we will or no, we are governed 
by His laws; but we may choose between love and coercion, betwéen 
an organic and a mechanical relation to our Creator. Once fallen 
out of organic into mechanical relations, our plight is serious indeed. 
The moral law becomes to us something external and coercitive, 
like Kant’s Categorical Imperative—which Baader called an “Ethic 
for Devils.”"” The whole supernatural realm becomes to us a 
closed book. Even inferior Nature comes to be conceived me- 
chanically, and her hidden life-forces, which reveal themselves only 


He himself preferred the term trasted with the “Deism” of Kant and 


spiritual-realen Theismus, which he con- the “Pantheism” of Hegel. 
™ Baader, Werke, I, 55. 


x2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


to the view from inward out, are overlooked. Nothing can remedy 
this state of blindness, isolation, and exaggerated subjectivity but 
a genuine incursion of redemptive love from a higher region. 
Even so, the process of redemption is tragic: it involves the death 
of the old life, which, breaking up and dissolving in its own fires, 
and passing through a crisis such as that which creates water out 
of hydrogen and oxygen, thus at last becomes ductile and malleable 
material for the divine Artist.‘° In losing its old life, it finds its 
true self; for Baader’s God, unlike the Absolute of Schelling’s 
earlier philosophy, is no all-consuming One who “eats up his crea- 
tures”; they find their true individuality only in Him.” ‘Thus 
are pantheism and theism reconciled: by avoiding the sharp dual- 
ism of the older theism while retaining the transcendence of God 
and the free individuality of man, for which the older pantheism 
had no room. Divide Spinoza by Descartes, Hegel by Kant, or 
Schelling by Giinther, and the quotient is Baader. 

Baader’s theory of knowledge is of a piece with his cosmology. 
As our life and health depend upon our maintaining organic rela- 
tions with the Life-Giver, so our intellectual health depends upon 
our maintaining organic relations with the object to be known. 
Knowing is an act of the whole nature, intellect, feeling, and will; 
a merely intellectual type of knowledge implies mechanical, non- 
organic relations between subject and object. In the perfect act 
of knowledge, there is a complete union of subject and object; 
Baader frequently compares it to sexual intercourse. Without the 
experience of God, without more or less complete union with God, 
there is therefore no knowledge of God. All rationalistic argu- 
ments which, like Giinther’s or Descartes’, attempt to infer the 
existence of God from the existence of something else, are doomed 
to failure. How can one “know God without God”? The real 
proof of God’s existence lies in the fact that some men are already 
living a supernatural life of heavenly harmony, quickened and 
sustained from above, and all have moments of awe and self- 
loathing when, in spite of themselves, they vaguely perceive that 
they are in rapport with a higher realm, where their true happiness 
lies. 


® Baader, Werke, II, 283, note. ™ Tbid., III, 285. 


INTRODUCTION 53 


Baader does not attempt to give any rational proof of the truth 
of his philosophy; that would be contrary to his principles. “All 
science,” he says, “forms a circle, whose two extremities are united, 
so that it is impossible to perceive where: they are joined.”*® No 
one criterion of truth is therefore possible; the parts of the system 
mutually confirm each other. ‘There are in reality three great 
criteria of truth, which must sustain one another: the immediate 
testimony of God to the soul of the mystic, the verdict of social 
authority or “common sense,” and the conclusions of individual 
reason. God is infallible in himself; but the man who fanatically 
trusts his mystic intuitions, without checking them up with the 
findings of reason and common sense, is apt to go astray. God’s 
truth comes through society; he who falls out of organic relations 
with society, falls out of relation with God. 
cally related to God—this means the Christian church, which is a 
social body reconciled to God through Christ—has a communicated 
infallibility. The individual, in so far as he codrdinates himself 
with such a society, has a conditional infallibility; his reason can 
be trusted. Knowledge is born of the intercourse of the individual 
mind with the social mind. Society, as the “male” principle in the 
generation of knowledge, necessarily has the initiative; but it must 
not ‘“‘rape” the individual reason. A philosophy based on individual 
reasoning alone, on the other hand, is no better than masturbation. 
Not the blind submission of the individual to society, but the “free 
coordination” of his private judgment with social authority is the 
way to infallible certitude. Freedom and authority, Voltaire and 
Lamennais, are thus reconciled.** 

The philosophy of the school of Munich is usually described as 
“Neo-Schellingian.” Schelling was of course the most famous 
of the philosophers who lent their aid to the Catholic Renaissance 
in Bavaria; but his influence must be regarded as secondary to 
Baader’s. Baader’s philosophy was worked out completely as early 
as 1809, when he published his remarkable Beitrage zur dyna- 


Society, when organi- 


cit., 16-43; Werner, op. cit., 443-452; 


This paragraph is based on two 
and Volume I of Baader’s Werke, which 


articles by E. Jourdain in the Revue 


Européenne, III, 65 ff, 182 ff, on Baad- 
er’s philosophy. 

* On Baader’s philosophy, see Vermeil, 
op. cit., 20, 21, 122-125; Schmidt, op. 


contains his most characteristic writings, 
and a good Introduction by his pupil 
Hoffmann. 


54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


mischen Philosophie im Gegensatze der Mechanischen. Schelling 
never influenced him except as a horrible example; on the contrary, 
it was under Baader’s influence that Schelling evolved, in his later 
years, to a semi-Catholic position, and came to join the school of 
Munich. Baader was never satisfied with Schelling’s philosophy, 
even in its latest form; he used to refer to it as a “pantheistic 


82 Tf we are to name the most 


ragout with Christian sauce. 
powerful exponent of philosophical Romanticism in the history of 
German Catholic thought, we must undoubtedly point to Franz 
Baader. It is hard to overestimate the extent of his influence; its 
scope was international. At the period we are considering, the 
Revue Européenne had for several years been endeavoring to ac- 
quaint the French public with his teachings; and its Munich corre- 
spondent, Jourdain, introduced an article on Baader’s theory of 
certitude with the remark that this theory was “at the same time 
that of almost all the learned Catholics in Germany.” ** 

To complete our picture of the philosophical situation in Ger- 
many in 1833, we need only refer briefly to two other schools, 
the school of Tiibingen and the school of Mayence. 

At Tiibingen, located near the center of Catholic Germany, the 
influence of Hermes and Giinther mingled with that of Baader, 
and Rationalism struggled with Romanticism; but, on the whole, 
it was Romanticism that prevailed. Staudenmaier and Kuhn, the 
Tiibingen philosophers, share with Giinther a certain alarm at the 
pantheistic leanings of the Munich school; but they are much more 
severe in their criticisms of Hermes and Giinther than in their 
criticisms of Baader; and the Romanticist conception of organism 
pervades all their teaching. The Tiibingen school was not so 
much interested in philosophical speculation for its own sake as was 
the Munich school; its greatest figure was not a philosopher, but 
a historian and theologian: Johann Adam Moehler, author of the 
famous Symbolik.** None the less, it played a most important 
part in the diffusion of philosophical Romanticism; for it applied 
the Romanticist ideas of organism and development specifically and 
in detail to the Catholic Church and the dogmas of the Catholic 


2 Goyau, II, 82. shortly before his death in 1838; but his 
3 Revue Européenne, I, 304. life was given to the upbuilding of the 
“* Moehler was transferred to Munich  ‘Tiibingen school. 


INTRODUCTION a5 


faith. It was largely from the iibingen theologians that the 
Catholic “Modernists” got their notion of the “evolution of dogma” 
and of the Church as a developing organism.*° 

‘The school of Mayence represents a tendency radically different 
from all the preceding. Its two founders, Colmar and Lieber- 
mann, were Alsatians who had been driven from Strasbourg by 
the French Revolution. Educated by the Jesuits, like all the 
Strasbourg clergy, they imparted to the school of Mayence a strong 
ultramontanist tinge, quite unique in Germany. Whereas the 
Rationalist and Romanticist schools of Bonn, Vienna, Munich, and 
Tiibingen were at one in their contempt of mediaeval scholasticism, 
the school of Mayence was strictly and aggressively scholastic, and 
opposed to all speculative innovations. “The Institutiones Theo- 
logicae of Liebermann, the most famous work produced by the 
school, was admirably clear as a text-book, so that it rapidly came 
into use in many countries; but it was totally and deliberately 
void of all originality. If the school of Mayence had any sym- 
pathy at all with contemporary philosophy, it was with French 
Traditionalism, and not with any of the schools of German 
philosophy, Catholic or non-Catholic. 

Shortly before Bautain sprang into prominence at Strasbourg, 
the surviving leaders of. the school of Mayence, Liebermann and 
his pupil Raess, had been driven out of Germany by the hostility 
of the Hessian government, which had founded a rival, anti-papal 
faculty of Catholic theology at Giessen. Returning to Alsace they 
proceeded to imprint upon the instruction at the Grand Séminaire 
at Strasbourg and the “Petite Sorbonne”*® at Molsheim the same 
rigid scholastic discipline which had characterized the instruction 
at Mayence. At the University of Strasbourg, the influence of 
Kantianism, Idealism, and Romanticism was all-controlling; in 
the Seminary at Strasbourg, mediaeval scholasticism reigned su- 
preme. ‘This is the situation which must be visualized if we are 
to understand the sudden popularity which Bautain achieved when 
he interpreted Catholicism to the Strasbourg youth in terms of 
Romanticism, and his sudden downfall when he attacked scholas- 
ticism and came into-conflict with the Grand Séminaire. 


® Vermeil, op. cit., 120-125, 451-473, at Molsheim in 1830, and superior of the 
and passim. Grand Séminaire in 1831—just in time 
* Raess became director of the School to make trouble for Bautain. 


CHAPTER WL 


LOUIS BAUTAIN: THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT 
SOUL 


OUIS-EUGENE-MARIE BAUTAIN was born at Paris on the seven- 
teenth of February, 1796. He was brought up a good 
Catholic, and always retained a vivid memory of the pious 
old serving-maid who taught him to pray, the white-haired priest 
who heard his first confession, and his own ecstatic feelings on the 
occasion of his first communion.’ Like many another youth of his 
generation, however, he was gradually weaned away from religion 
in the course of his education. | 


Alas! [says Bautain] The fervor of that first communion cooled little 
by little, when the tumult of the senses began... . . The coarse voice of 
my animal nature drowned out the soft voice of my spiritual nature; and, 
when Reason came upon the scene with its pretentions of judging every- 
thing and explaining everything, it did not fail to take the side of the 
flesh. . . . I passed over into the camp of philosophy to enjoy complete 
liberty; hitherto I had been a believer; now I took pride in becoming a 
freethinker.” 


It was at the Ecole Normale, where Bautain matriculated in 
1813, that he came under influences that led him definitely “over 
into the camp of philosophy.” His interests at first seem to have 
been literary rather than philosophical;* but there was at the Ecole 
Normale a young instructor named Victor Cousin, just beginning 
his brilliant career as a teacher, and full of a magnetic enthusiasm 
that attracted all the students to his lectures. Foremost among 
the students who clustered about Cousin were two whose names 
afterwards became well-known in French philosophical circles: 


' Bautain, Les choses de Pautre monde: * This literary bent remained; he was 
journal dun philosophe, 8-9. (Abbrev.: always the orator and the stylist as well 
Choses.) DeRégny certifies that this and as the thinker. Witness his remarkable 
many other passages of this partly ficti- book on L’Art de parler en public, still 


tious work are really autobiographical. used by many teachers of public speaking. 
2 ) 
Les choses de lautre monde, 9; quot- 
ed by de Régny, 13. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 57 


Jouffroy and Damiren. Bautain was their intimate friend; they 
went, says M. Campaux, by the name of “the three inseparables.””* - 
All three, it would seem, went through some such crisis of religious 
Skepticism as that which Jouffroy experienced, and which he has 
described with bitter poignancy in “Comsent les dogmes finissent.” 
From that time on, they looked to philosophy to fill the place left 
vacant by the destruction of religious faith, and pursued their phil- 
osophical studies with a truly religious passion. 

We must not suppose that Bautain, in ceasing to be a Catholic, 
became either an ethical individualist or a materialist in meta- 
physics. Such views were not likely to develop under the teaching 
of Cousin. 
of his youthful philosophical tendencies from his thesis for the 
degree of Agrégé in Philosophy, defended in August, 1816, and 
still preserved in the files of the Ecole Normale. It is entitled 
De idealismo et phaenomenismo, in eo quod pertinet ad existentiam 


We may, as a matter of fact, form a very exact notion 


substantiae spiritualis, and aims to prove that the Lockian and 
Kantian epistemologies both lead inevitably to skepticism concern- 
ing not only the existence of an external world, but the existence 
of the Self as well—a skepticism from which there is no escape 
save through some such doctrine of common-sense knowledge, in- 
tuition, or “faith,” as was then taught in Scotland by Reid and 
Stewart, and in Germany by Merian and Ancillon.’ Bautain 
supports his contention with a painstaking review of English phil- 
osophy from Locke to Dugald Stewart, and German philosophy 
from Kant through Fichte, Schelling, and the Berlin Academists, 
in their bearing upon the problem of the existence of the Self—a 
Theresissor 


course, little originality or spontaneity in a dissertation of this 


very good piece of work for a youth of twenty. 


sort; and, in the main, it serves only to show us how completely 


“This friendship was never entirely is traced in the Choses de Vautre monde 


broken, though Bautain’s conversion 
naturally established a barrier. I find in 
a report of one of Bautain’s sermons in 
the Univers Religieux for Apr. 29, 1840, 
the information that “MM. Jouffroy, 
Damiron, and other notables, political 
and scientific, were observed in the 
audience.” The fictitious philosopher 
whose gradual conversion to Catholicism 


(Bautain’s last work) is undoubtedly 
meant to be Damiron. Evidently Bau- 
tain never ceased to hope that his old 
friends might be won over to the Catho- 
lic faith. 

° Followers of Jacobi and the Berlin 
Academy. See Erdmann, Gesch. der Phil.,, 
Index. 


58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


the Scottish realism of Reid and Stewart, lately introduced into 
France by Royer-Collard, had come to dominate the Ecole Normale. 
At the very end, however, there creeps in a note of dissatisfaction, 
indicating a craving for a more daringly speculative metaphysic 
than the Scottish method of exact psychological observation made 
possible: 


But this observation, so laborious and so difficult—what does it reveal 
to us? Judgments, notions, opinions of our mind, natural prejudices 
whereby we are compelled to believe in the existence of that which we 
cannot see. I certainly know that I exist. But who am I? What is 
my nature? What is my origin? For what purpose was I born? 
Whence came I; where am I; whither am I being whirled away? Ex- 
perience has no answer to these questions, which nevertheless incessantly 
tempt and trouble the human mind. . . . Before us, as we are admitted 
to the world of the unseen, no torch is glowing but the dim torch of 
reason; we walk along a steep and slippery path. Most often we are 
ready to fall with weariness, and yet we are never satisfied; often we 
are driven to despair, but never to boredom.—Despair is, in fact, the only 
repose of the metaphysician.—Yet if some flickering light shows itself in 
the distance, we rise up and press on again in that quest which is imposed 
upon us by the human nature of the human mind, which always tries 
to bring its knowledge up to the level of its faith. Strange indeed 1s 
the condition of men, who forever seek to know what it is not given 
them to know, and who have the firmest faith in those things of which 
they are necessarily ignorant. (Pars seconda, peroration.) 


There is something more than florid rhetoric here; there is an 
angoisse métaphysique, a quenchless thirst for ultimates and abso- 
lutes, with which only certain religious souls are tormented. Hap- 
less youth, to have turned to philosophy to slake such a thirst! Can 
we not already foresee the issue of his impassioned quest for Truth? 
Obviously, the Scottish philosophy, with its cautious affirmation of 
belief in a Self and in an external world, will not long content 
him. He will have certitude concerning the ultimate mysteries of 
existence—a certitude as immediate and irresistible as that which 
assures him of his own existence. And if the Scottish philosophers 
are right in saying that so elementary a fact as his own existence 
can in no wise be established by reason, but only by an exercise 
of faith—what then? For some men, the conclusion would be 
that, in ultimate questions of metaphysics, we must be content with 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 59 


probabilities, and so, why rack our brains over essentially insoluble 
problems? For certain sensitive minds, however, these ultimate 
problems are the all-important ones, and uncertainty with respect 
to them is simply unbearable. What happens in such a mind when, 
weary with fruitless searching, it permits itself to dwell on the 
Church of Rome and her claim of absolute certitude, we know 
from Newman’s Apologia. So it was to be with Bautain. For 
a little while he was to hold aloft the “dim torch of reason,” and 
persevere in his hopeless endeavor to find religious certainty by the 
methods of philosophy; eventually he would be glad enough to 
take up again the torch of faith which he had flung down. 

On his graduation from the Ecole Normale, Bautain was at 
once appointed to teach philosophy at the Collége Royal, Strasbourg, 
where he took up his duties in October, 1816. His success as a 
teacher was such that he was invited a year later—at the ripe age 
of twenty-one!—to conduct a course in philosophy at the Uni- 
versity. “From the very start,” says M. Campaux, “he acquitted 
himself with honor, and obtained at once such a success with the 
youth of Strasbourg as was hitherto unheard-of. All those who 
heard him were carried away, and rivalled each other in pressing 
around the desk of the young orator.” With his “piercing and 
powerful glance, giving a remarkable impression of resolution and 
will, something at once imposing and attractive,” he combined a 
fluency of diction and a facility in the exposition of the most ab- 
struse ideas which quite enthralled his auditors. “Good fortune 
brings responsibilities, as he knew; and he used to prepare each of 
his lectures as a general prepares his manoeuvres on the eve of a 
battle. He gave back to the public in zeal, in work, in pains, all 
that the public gave him in the shape of attention, friendliness, 
and favor.”’® 

Victor Cousin was of course delighted at the brilliant opening 
of his young protégé’s career, and, recognizing in him a capacity 
for systematic speculation lacking in himself, looked upon him 
as one of the most promising of the future leaders of the Eclectic 
school. After Bautain’s first year of teaching at the University, 
Cousin invited him to spend the vacation with him, touring in 


* Campaux, I, quoted by de Régny, 11, 
Vaan Co 


60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Germany and interviewing the leading philosophers. Hegel, whom 
they met on this tour, is said to have remarked brusquely to Cousin, 
as the visitors were departing, “Monsieur, give up the thought of 
creating a system; leave that task to your young friend.””’ 

Contact with German thought introduced a new phase in Bau- 
tain’s philosophical development, as it did in Cousin’s. He took 
up the study of the post-Kantian Idealists with new interest and 
respect. Fichte’s works fascinated him; they turned his attention 
to ethical and political questions, and made him more of a liberal 
and a free-thinker than ever before. On his return from Ger- 
many, he undertook to give a course in Morale transcendentale, 
based squarely upon Fichte’s Sittenlehre. We are indebted to 
Charles Boersch, editor of the Revue d’Alsace, for a summary of 
the views expressed by Bautain in this course.” I quote at some 
length; for it was in conscious opposition to this philosophy of 
liberty, reason, and ‘‘absolute spontaneity,’ that his own system 
later took shape, after his conversion to Catholicism. It is im- 
possible to understand the Catholic phase of his intellectual evolu- 
tion except in contrast with this brief but enthusiastic Fichtean phase. 


M. Bautain [writes Boersch] then became in his lectures the reflection 
of the political passions which were agitating France. Bolder than M. 
Cousin, he did not stop at Kant, or at the Constituant Assembly and its 
hopes of reform. He identified himself with Fichte, with the wild and 
inexorable genius of the Convention; he lifted up the will upon a 
pedestal: he became . . . the apostle of the human will, in which he 
saw, like Fichte, the source of all dignity and all moral grandeur; he 
made it man’s glory to accept no yoke, to put into all his acts that inde- 
pendence of the will which ought to rule his thoughts. 

It is this independence of the will, M. Bautain then used to say, which 
makes the moral goodness of an action. . . . Pure liberty is thus the 
goal of all human life. This liberty is an ideal revealed by the reason. 
It is a transcendental idea which has not its type in the phenomenal 
world; for without us, we meet only necessity, and within us, we find 
only a will subjected by its present state to the influence of a hostile 


' Laissez ce soin & votre jeune homme. tation of these views, and accuses him— 
Quoted on the authority of the Abbé most unjustly—of trimming his sails to 
Walther by Campaux, II, 41. the political winds. Boersch, who was 


8 jig . 

Revue @ Alsace, 2me Série, I, 339 et himself a political radical, may perhaps 
seq. (année 1837). Boersch expresses exaggerate slightly the revolutionary im- 
his regret at Bautain’s subsequent recan- plications of Bautain’s ethical teachings. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 61 


Nature, and free only in certain moments. It is to realize this ideal 
that man should continually strain on, and thus the whole of moral 
science is contained in these words: Man, act in conformity with thy 
reason, which reveals to thee thy liberty; or, in other words, Man, work 
out thy liberty, make thyself free... .° | 

The psychology of M. Bautain was then in perfect harmony with 
his ethics. . . . The will found its law in itself, in itself alone: the 
reason in its turn ought to be an autonomous power, the fairest apanage 
of man; it too ought to serve as pivot for all psychology, as the will 
served as pivot for ethics. . . . The reason, M. Bautain used to say, in 
its strict acceptance, does not signify the sum of the intellectual faculties; 
neither is it reasoning or the faculty of deducing or inducing: it is the 
power by which man’s mind communicates with Being; that is, with 
what is in itself, with the Absolute.?° 

A great, a noble apanage did M. Bautain then see in the human 
reason! Brilliant its privilege: to commune with the Absolute, to see 
God face to face, to contemplate him in his essence, to comprehend him 
by its own force, its own capacity, without any superior direct revelation, 
without incarnation. And what need had it of religious authority, . 
since itself had grandeur enough, divine elements enough, to raise itself 
to God, creative power enough to reveal to man the ideal of liberty? 

That was a period of greatness and enthusiasm for M. Bautain. It 
was a noble mission which he accomplished, to awaken in men’s souls the 
feeling of independence, to inspire the youth with that consciousness of 
human dignity, and the power of the will, which makes them conceive 
great designs and accomplish great tasks. Surrounded by the sympathy 
of a numerous audience, he reflected in his doctrines the popular tendency ° 
of the epoch; he was the philosophical mouth-piece of that movement 
of reaction against the Restoration, and his teaching was a battering-ram 
which was beating a breach in the stil] unsteady power of the Bourbons. 


( 
Boersch’s report of Bautain’s liberal tendencies at this period is 


confirmed by a quotation—probably from this same course in T'an- 
scendental Ethics, though misdated 1820—which js preserved in 


the Archives of the Bishopric of Strasbourg among the papers col- 
lected by Bautain’s enemies: 


There are in the nation two powers, one absolute and one relative. 
The first is the reason, the second is the will. The nation is its own 
sovereign when . . . the executive function (force public) is exercised 
only in the direction dictated by reason. . . . But when it no longer 
follows reason, when it tends to impair liberty, obedience is no longer 


° Lecons dictées de philosophie morale, shad) 38 28: 
8§ 25 et 26. Année 1818. 


62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


obligatory, for it is obligatory only towards legitimate authority, that is, 
towards that which is in conformity with reason.** 


The corollaries of this are said to be “the inviolability of indi- 
vidual liberty,” including liberty “of property, of thought, of in- 
dustry, of opinion and of conscience,” and the “equality of the 
members” of society. The extract closes with quotations from 
Plato, Cicero, and other “‘old revolutionaries.” The copyist adds 
that he was credibly informed by M. G——, who sent him the 
quotation, that it was for these opinions that Bautain was suspended 
from his functions in 1822, by order of the government—although, 
as we shall see, other reasons for the suspension were alleged at 
the time. 

We cannot be sure as to Bautain’s attitude toward the Church 
at this period; but it seems probable that he was in a state of 
complete alienation from her authority and from most of her 
teachings. When he was graduated from normal school, he must 
still have felt certain recurrent regrets at having lost the maternal 
guidance of the Church in matters of opinion, for he had none 
too much confidence in the “‘dim torch” of the human reason, to 
whose guidance he had so lately entrusted himself; but now that 
German Idealism had removed his agnosticism by teaching him to 
see in the reason a transcendental faculty, capable of piercing to 
the core of all life’s ultimate mysteries, he definitely turned his 
back on the Church, cast away religious faith as a useless crutch, 
and, rejoicing with all the exuberance of youth in his new-found 
freedom, set out to solve the riddle of the universe alone. May 
we not see a reflection of Bautain’s own views at this stage in his 
development in those which he ascribes to his fictitious philosopher 
in the Choses de Pautre monde? Speaking of religion, he says: 


It was a realm apart where there was nothing of interest to us, in the 
first place because, in it, reason was dominated by faith and did not 
enjoy its right of liberty, and in the second place because the intuition 


“ FB,B1. The letters FB (Fonds Bau- library of the Collége de Juilly, near 
tain) refer to Bautain’s manuscript re- Meaux. FB,U and FB,V1 to V10 (the 
mains, as catalogued by Professor Bau- most important Ms. courses) belong to 
din. FB,A to FB,E will be found in the the Congrégation des Dames de St.-Louis, 
Archives of the Bishopric of Strasbourg. at Juilly. 

FB,H to FB,Q will be found in the 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 63 


of the idea of the Absolute lifted us far above the obscurity of belief, 
useful only to those who were incapable of climbing the heights of 
knowledge . . . faith keeping them in a perpetual state of tutelage, in 
a sort of childhood. I continued in that attitude for a number of 
years, filled with the importance and superiority of the sort of caste to 
which I belonged, and working day and night to render myself worthy 


Ohuiteeavue es 


This Promethean phase in Bautain’s development was destined 
to be of short duration. In March, 1819, while still engaged in 
lecturing upon Transcendental Ethics, he met with a sudden inter- 
ruption in his brilliant career. Intoxicated with his success, stimu- 
lated by the plaudits of his auditors, he had given himself fever- 
ishly to the work of preparing his lectures and perfecting their 
literary form. To penetrate ever more deeply into the thought 
of the German philosophers whom he had taken as his masters, and 
then to explain and illustrate their ideas with French lucidity, in- 
volved a good deal of mental strain, which eventually undermined 
his health. One day, in the very midst of a lecture, his mind 
suddenly became a blank; and after attempting vainly to pick up 
the thread of his discourse, he was forced to stammer an apology 
and leave the room. For months afterward, he remained in a 
state of nervous exhaustion, a prey to melancholia. In October, 
he attempted to resume his lectures, but broke down again after 
a month. Plagued with indigestion and insomnia, dragging him- 
self feebly along like an old man, he was a pathetic figure. His 
mental state became desperate; let him describe it himself: 


Unable to work any more, incapable of thinking and consequently of 
talking, falling back at the least effort upon himself, in whom he now 
found only impotence and vacancy, having no longer the plaudits of men 
and the clamor of popularity to sustain him, he felt himself fainting in 
body and soul . . . he thought that his life on earth was at an end, and 
he had the criminal thought of breaking off its thread. Poor philosopher! 
For, as you see, all his learning had not taught him how to endure 
sickness, or misfortune; and, in his youthful pride, he imagined he had 
nothing more to do here below, since he could no longer shine! Poor 
philosopher, who arrogated to himself the right of destroying his ex- 
istence, as if he were the author of it, or as if he were responsible to 
no one for the post at which he had been placed! But the characteristic 


2 Op. cit., 9-10. 


64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


of all non-Christian philosophy is the pretention to autonomy, to inde- 
pendence; and at that time I considered myself a philosopher and was 
not a Christian.’® 


It is quite possible that Bautain’s career might indeed have ended 
in suicide, if he had not chanced to meet at Baden, where he had 
gone for his health in the summer of 1820, a remarkable woman 
who was to exercise a decisive influence upon all the rest of his 
life: Louise Humann, sister of Georges Humann, and niece of 
the celebrated Mgr. Colmar, Archbishop of Mayence. 

Mlle. Humann was already known to Bautain by reputation, as 
a woman who presented a most extraordinary combination of 
devoutness and learning. Under her uncle’s tuition, she had 
cultivated the most various types of science, from philology to 
experimental chemistry; but she had made a special study of the 
contemporary German philosophers, whose works she had analyzed 
and criticized with care, in little note-books intended only for her 
own perusal. She was, in short, as Eugene Baudin puts it, “an 
Alsatian Mme. de Staél.’’™* 

It was Mlle. Humann’s knowledge of German philosophy which 
first attracted Bautain to her—that, and that alone. Feminine 
charm she had none; she was then fifty-four, and had never been 
good-looking.” Even her reputation for erudition was a ques- 
tionable asset; Bautain expected, as he says, to find her “a sort of 
bas-bleu,’ and was in no wise pleased at the prospect. But the 
woman to whom he was introduced turned out to be “‘a very simple 
person, very dignified in her manners, talking but little, always 
calmly, without any pretentiousness but with much sense and pre- 
cision”; and when the conversation drifted to German philosophy, 
Bautain was ready to admit that he had met his equal. 


The fact is . . . [says Bautain] that I had never met any woman or 
any person who talked upon it more pertinently or more clearly... . 
She had come in touch with the principal writers of that period, or had 


®De Régny, 17-18. This and the I refer, for convenience, to his citations 


following quotations dealing with Bau- 
tain’s conversion are all drawn from 
Bautain’s own most interesting account 
of his conversion, in La Chrétienne de 
mos jours, Vol. II, Letter 15. Since de 
Régny quotes practically the entire letter, 


instead of to the original source. 

“4 Touis Bautain, le philosophe de 
Strasbourg, 8. (Abbrev., Baudin, I.) 

* Her portrait is reproduced in Une 
Francaise d’Alsace: Mlle. Louise Hu- 
mann, by Fliche, 2nd ed., 1921. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 65 


read their works—and not superficially, as women usually read, and even 
many men, but with pen in hand to itemize their thoughts and if need 
be to develop and rectify them. . . . It was a treasure I had discovered; 
and I was all the more pleased at it because the last straw that completed 
the ruination of my health had been the study of this philosophy in the 
original texts, which I had great difficulty in understanding. I could 
no longer read, but I could listen, and I found a living book, which 
gave me the *éswmé of many. others, with the added advantage of the 
clearness of the French tongue and the charm of a friendly voice.'® 


The acquaintance thus begun in Baden was renewed in Stras- 
bourg. Mlle. Humann had just recently returned to the city of 
her birth, after spending many years in Mayence with Mer. Col- 
mar. ‘The death of her tutor and friend and spiritual guide had 
now cast her adrift, at a time of life when it is hard to form new 
attachments and take up new tasks. Lonely, hungering for in- 
tellectual companionship, feeling a bitter sense of her uselessness 
and longing for some mission to fulfil, she found a veritable 





answer to prayer in the opportunity to mother and befriend—and, 
qui sait? perhaps convert—the unhappy young philosopher. As for 
Bautain, the conversations which he had at Mlle. Humann’s each 
evening gave him a new interest in life, and literally restored him 
to health. In less time than one would have believed possible, 
Bautain was lecturing again at the University, guided in his reading, 
and more and more in his thinking, by Mlle. Humann. 

The course of lectures which Bautain first undertook was on a 
new subject for him: Aesthetics. “The truth is, he was too un- 
settled in his thinking to undertake to lecture on Ethics or 
Metaphysics. His former philosophy had definitively gone by the 
board; it had failed to give him any help in his hour of need, and, 
to him, that was the most convincing proof of its falsity. To 
Bautain, philosophy always meant philosophy of life. No longer 
could he exalt the powers of the human reason, the autonomy of 
the will, and the rights of the individual: the nightmare of 
melancholia had destroyed his confidence in the natural capacities 
of man; and, if he was in the future to find anything on which 
to base his thinking and rest his confidence, it must be something 
surer than his own uncertain reason, something steadier than his 
own wavering will. 


* De Régny, 53-54. 


66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


He was probably wholly in the dark as to what the new basis 
of his philosophy was to be. Some time during this crucial year he 
must have returned from the study of the post-Kantian idealists 
to the study of Kant himself; for all his subsequent writings take 
the main results of the Krittk der Reinen Vernunft for granted, 
as final and unimpeachable. ‘That the human reason is metaphysi- 
cally impotent, that it is incapable of acquiring, by its own powers, 
any valid knowledge of things-in-themselves, of ultimate realities 
—this proposition became henceforth the cornerstone of all his 
thinking. This implies not only the rejection of speculative ideal- 
ism, with its easy identification of the real and the rational, but 
also the rejection of the scholastic philosophy, with its rationalistic 
arguments for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. 
If the ultimate mysteries of life can be penetrated at all—such 
seems to have been the conclusion to which he came at this tme— 
it must be by some faculty other than the reason. Whether there 
existed such a faculty, he may well have doubted, for a while. 
He was always of the opinion that the Kritsk der Praktischen 
Vernunft was a clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to repair the 
damage done by the Kritsh der Reinen Vernunft; the upshot of 
the Critical Philosophy was absolute skepticism: ultimate reality 
was unknowable.** Whether Bautain actually became for a time 
a complete skeptic—a terrible cul-de-sac for a man with his hunger 
for ultimates and absolutes—or whether he began to glimpse the 
solution as soon as he fully perceived the difficulty, we do not know. 
We know only that he went through a severe mental struggle, 
from which he emerged—thanks to Mlle. Humann—a firm be- 
liever in the doctrines of the Catholic faith. 

For some time Bautain, too proud to burden another with his 
woes, tried to conceal his philosophical difficulties from his friend; 
but at length, during a sudden fit of mental depression, he made 
a clean breast to her of all his mental misgivings, and all his 
physical distress, as well. He confessed that his lonely life was 
becoming unbearable to him; she invited him to take all his meals 
at her house, and treated him thenceforth as a member of the 
family. From this time on, their conversations turned more and 


™ See the answer to the fourth charge  tain’s Lettre a Mgr. Lepappe de Tréwern, 
(the charge of being a Kantian) in Bau- évéque de Strasbourg. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 67 


more upon religious themes; and Bautain found, to his surprise, 
that, quite without argumentation, simply by the naive and modest 
expression of her religious intuitions, Mlle. Humann was able to 
suggest solutions to problems which had tormented him all his life. 


Even today [writes Bautain] after all these years, I] cannot wonder 
enough at the gentleness with which she put up with my youthful im- 
patience and my philosophical sallies, letting me speak at my leisure, and 
then taking up the question in her own fashion. . . . Her gentleness, 
which never contradicted me directly, but which regained all its advan- 
tages when it came her turn to expound, had much more influence over 
my mind than all the argumentations of controversy; and when, having 
spoken at length, I listened in my turn, I almost always ended, some- 
times without realizing it, by being of her opinion. . . . So, when I had 
worked off my youthful fire and emptied my philosophical sack—which 
was very soon—lI came to listen more than I talked; and, almost without 
noticing it, the professor became the disciple.*§ 


It was not long before Bautain’s philosophical scorn of religious 
dogmas—which he had long regarded as mere “‘sensible forms or 
degenerate symbols of absolute truth”’°—began to melt away. As 
Mlle. Humann talked, and as he read the Scriptures under her 
guidance, 


I soon acquired the conviction [he says] through the insight of my 
intelligence, through the clear ideas of my mind, through a loftier 
contemplation of Nature, which appeared to me like the glorious symbol 
of a higher world; through the simpler and more satisfying explanation 
of the great problems of human life, to which I saw no solution until 
then . . . I acquired the conviction, I say, that Christian doctrine is 


philosophy’s crown, or, if you will, her last word. . . . How I had 
been led to this conviction, in truth, I could not tell in detail. But at 
any rate I had arrived there . . . led by the luminous and affectionate 


words of my good angel, who, without ever imposing anything upon me 

. simply answered my needs as fast as they made themselves mani- 
fest. . . . Never was a man’s liberty more fully respected, and never, 
too, was it more fully conquered.”° 


From theory to practice was another long step. Bautain real- 
ized perfectly well that the Christian philosophy he had adopted 


* De Régny, 59. ” Thid., 60-61. 
* Ibid., 58. 


68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


“was not a philosophy like any other, and that no progress is to. 
be made in it unless deeds are joined to ideas to realize and confirm 
them.” Nevertheless, he found prayer and confession bitter pills 
for his pride to swallow; and at least once broke into open revolt 
as he felt the net of ecclesiastical control closing about him. Mlle. 
Humann’s tact saw him through every crisis. 

It was Bautain’s first prayer that marked the most decisive step 
of all. He was disposed to dispute the efficacy and utility of prayer. 
She refused to discuss the matter with him, smilingly reminding 
him that he was a philosopher, and would be sure to worst her in 
an argument. Prayer was efficacious; she affirmed that on the basis 
of her own experience, which was perhaps a bit of evidence de- 
serving to be weighed—but he was not far enough advanced for 
the subject of prayer to open up properly for him, as yet. 


Her patience disconcerted me [says Bautain]; ... by the strange 
contradictory tendency of our nature, I began to desire what she would 
not explain to me—still less impose upon me—and I was impelled to 
try it just because I was thought incapable of it. That very evening, 
I searched my memory for the prayers of my childhood ... and... 
after saying a Pater and an Ave, I invoked the Unknown God, like the 
Athenians in St. Paul’s day, asking him with all my heart for his light, 
that I might know him, and his grace, that I might love and serve him. 
The next day, I returned triumphant to madame Louise,*? telling her 
that I had prayed, and that the feeling of peace and trust it had left 
with me had persuaded me that prayer was good for something. Since 
that moment, I have not left off.°? 


This crucial step taken, it was henceforth impossible for Bautain 
to turn back; logic and conscience both urged him on. Mlle. 
Humann did not press him; ‘God has his good time,” she would 
say. Almost two years elapsed between Bautain’s first meeting 
with her and the event which definitely marked his conversion to 
the Catholic faith: his first confession, made to a venerable priest 
at Einsiedeln. 

The circumstances of this conversion—the total lack of argu- 
mentation, the large réle played by vague intuitions and unconscious 

1A pseudonym for Mlle. Humann, in the account from which we have been 


whose identity Bautain does not reveal quoting. 


= De Régny, 64-65. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 69 


personal influence, the impossibility of summing up in any distinct 
chain of reasoning the startling change of convictions which he 
experienced—these circumstances powerfully influenced Bautain’s 
whole theory of the nature of religious ‘truth, and of the proper 
relations of reason and faith in Christian apologetics. They serve 
to “explain up to a certain point” (as de Régny justly remarks) 
“the repugnance which M. Bautain henceforth showed for purely 
rational proofs of the truth.”** ‘Thus, at least indirectly, through 
her part in Bautain’s conversion, Mlle. Humann may be said to 
have exercised a controlling influence over all his subsequent think- 
ing. But her influence was also direct; she was a philosopher as 
well as a Christian, and changed the current of his thinking as 
decisively as she changed the current of his life. If we are to 
understand his philosophical evolution, we must know something 
of the philosophical tendencies which she represented. 

One would like to know the ideas of this singular woman more 
in detail. Unfortunately, she had a firm conviction that a woman 
should never publish a book, and ordered all her manuscripts to be 
burned when she died. Only a few scattered fragments of. her 
writings survive. These few are sufficient, however, to reveal the 
main tendencies of her thinking. 

First of all, it is clear that she was a mystic—not merely a 
theoretical mystic, like Plotinus, convinced of the superiority of 
intuition to discursive reason, but a practical mystic, like St. ‘Theresa, 
convinced that she was herself in frequent and immediate touch 
with the divine. ‘‘Monseigneur Colmar,” we are told, “thought 
he discerned in her a soul illumined by a supernatural light, and 
was therefore wont to take her advice in every serious crisis.”** 
That she was herself confident of her powers is evident from the 
following phrases which occur in her diary: 


. the beams of light which He sends me almost daily like my daily 


teats ot 
. . . pour into me Thy light in proportion as Thou shalt render me 


susceptible to it, and let me make it my own only in so far as it shall be 
needful to those to whom Thou shalt desire to communicate it by my 
instrumentality... . 


3 Tbid., 70. 4 Thid., 49, note 1. 


70 THE PHILOSOPHY ‘OF BAUTAIN 


Nature has lifted her veil, and has showed herself in her simplicity 
town “eyes acs 

To-day I tore up a lot more of my papers, and I was strongly tempted 
to burn them all, to confine myself henceforth to whatever the light 
from on high shall deign to communicate to me immediately. . . .”° 


It is in the light of her mysticism that Mlle. Humann’s criticism 
of the contemporary German philosophers is to be appreciated — 


these system-builders, these modern masters of philosophy, who attempt to 
build a science with what they call their chiaroscuro, that is, their natural 
light. . . . They talk of man, pretending to talk of him as psycholo- 
gists, and they know neither the origin, nor the necessary law, nor the 
end of man. They talk of God, and perhaps they have never opened 
their souls to receive and taste his divine activity; they know not what 
it is to love Him; it is with difficulty that they believe He exists; .. . 
they do not suspect that religion is divine and as ancient as the world, 
since it is the bond which unites man to God, the living rapport between 
God and man. And how should they understand anything about this 
rapport since they know neither God nor man? *® 


I have italicized the key-sentence. It is evident that, for Mlle. 
Humann, as for all the Christian mystics, the knowledge of ulti- 
mate reality is impossible without the immediate experience of 
Ultimate Reality—an experience that is not merely intellectual, 
but emotional and moral as well, and an experience attainable only 
by the pure and the humbly receptive soul. This principle of 
Mlle. Humann’s became a cornerstone of the philosophy of her 
disciple. 

Another /eit-motiv in Bautain’s philosophy which we find also 
in Mlle. Humann’s, is the rule of spiritual law in the natural world: 


It is impossible [she writes] to make a serious study of natural objects, 
and of the physical world and its laws, without discovering at every 
moment wonderful analogies between this world and the sacred Truths 
which Religion teaches.‘ 


This is not nature-mysticism in the Wordsworthian sense. Nature 
is not the garment of God; it is a sphere of corruption and un- 


* Fliche, Mlle. Louise Humann, 76-78. *" Thid., 126. 
* Thid.. 127-128. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL rie 


reality, by comparison with the realm of pure and changeless Being 
from which it fell. 


The Christian [writes Mlle. Humann] who believes with greater 
certainty and confidence in things invisible than in those which fall 
within the domain of the senses . . . sees in Nature only a restless agent 
which makes and unmakes, which produces and destroys, and in the 
world only a passing show, wherein there is nothing stable and permanent, 
nothing true and subsistent except the pure light and life which are 
of God.”® 


It is clear from these passages, and others like them, that the 
general stream of thought with which Mlle. Humann brought 
Bautain in contact was the ancient tradition of Christian mysticism, 
which goes back through Boehme, Eckhart, and Scotus Erigena 
to pseudo-Dionysius and the Alexandrian fathers—and through 
them, finally, to Philo and the Platonic tradition. Mingled with 
theosophic, occultistic, and Cabalistic tendencies, this ancient mysti- 
cal tradition was just then exerting a most powerful influence upon 
all the philosophers of France and Germany. It was mediated 
partly by the philosophy of Jacob Boehme, which enjoyed an 
unheard-of popularity throughout the epoch of Romanticism, and 
partly by more classical sources such as neo-Platonism. Sound 
deeply enough in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, Schleier- 
macher, or even Hegel, and you will strike mysticism; but far 
more mystical than the philosophy of such men was the popular 
philosophy of the day—and it was from this secondary stratum, I 
should say, the stratum represented by men like Jacobi in Prot- 
estant circles and men like Franz Baader in Catholic circles, that 
Mlle. Humann drew her leading ideas. 

I mention Jacobi and Baader because their influence upon Bautain 
(via Mlle. Humann) is clear and undeniable. From Jacobi must 
have come Bautain’s conception of faith as a cognitive faculty; 
from Baader, his conception of the analogy between cognition and 
biological reproduction. But Jacobi and Baader were representa- 
tives of a very wide-spread movement of thought. In an article 
on Baader in the Revue Européenne at about this time,” the 
remark is made that Baader’s theory of certitude “is at the same 


* Ibid., 128-129. ® Revue Européenne, 1, 298, et seg. 


72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


time that of almost all the Catholic savants of Germany”; while 
Baron Bunsen, in a letter preserved in the Fonds Bautain, observes 
that Bautain’s anti-intellectualism is “almost general in our German 
schools, especially that of Schelling and that of Baader.’*° An 
investigation of this whole movement of thought** would cast much 
light upon the unavowed presuppositions of German idealism. 

But to return to the story of Bautain’s development—the years 
1820 to 1822, as we have seen, witnessed a gradual change in 
his whole intellectual and moral attitude. It is interesting to trace 
the steps in this change. First of all, when still unconverted, he 
undertook, at Mlle. Humann’s suggestion, to make a French trans- 
lation of Krummacher’s Paradles,’? a children’s book in which 
analogies between natural phenomena and religious ideas are poet- 
ically traced. Next, we find him exchanging his course on Aes- 
thetics, at Easter, 1821, for a course in Psychology, “whose principal 
data,” as de Régny informs us, “were suggested by Mlle. Humann.” 
Then, for the academic year 1821-22, he boldly chose Metaphysics 
for his field; and his auditors were soon aware that a radical change 
had taken place in his point of view. 

Discussion over this course became quite hot. ‘The political 
radicals and the rationalists were scandalized to find him exalting 
duty and faith in place of liberty and reason; the Protestants at 
once detected a Catholic drift; the Catholics themselves were a bit 
alarmed at the violence of his attacks upon the reason, which 
savored of skepticism. Slanderous tongues, as M. Campaux re- 
ports,°* proceeded to garble the professor’s teachings: he had said, 
“God does not exist; he is”; and his critics, suppressing the second 
half of the sentence, loudly accused him of atheism. Bautain 
meanwhile went his way, calm in his new-found faith. Seeking 


8° FB,K, Cahier I, 11-12. That Baad- (Vols. I, II, III, & IX) concurrently 


er’s opinions were well known to Bautain 
is proved by the following remark in a 
letter to Prince Mestchersky (FB,K, 
Cahier II, 17): “I think him sincerely 
Christian at heart, but perhaps too much 
carried away with the ideas of Saint- 
Martin and of Jacob Boehme. He would 
have much more influence if he wrote 
more clearly. But his style is désolant.” 
A series of articles by and about Baader 
was running in the Revue Européenne 


with Bautain’s first articles. 

* A very good brief sketch of this move- 
ment of thought is to be found in the 
introduction to Vermeil’s J. A. Moehler 
et Pécole catholique de Tubingue, Paris, 
1913. 

*’ Published 1821; ran through 7 edi- 
tions; later editions contained additional 
parables by Bautain. 

See de Régny, 75-76. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL ae 


to enrich his store of empirical data, and to find new evidences 
of spiritual law in the natural world, he entered the medical school 
at Easter, 1822, while still continuing to teach at the University 
and the Collége Royal. 

Toward the end of the academic year, the much-discussed course 
in Metaphysics was suddenly interrupted. M. Budan de Saint- 
Laurent, inspector general of the University, was sent from Paris 
by the Government to investigate Bautain’s teaching. After 
listening to one of Bautain’s lectures, he caused a sensation among 
the auditors by rising in his place and publicly denouncing the 
professor, on the ground that in maintaining the impotence of the 
reason he was undermining religion and morals. Later in the 
summer—just after making the general confession which completed 
his union with the Catholic Church—Bautain received word that 
he had been suspended from his functions in consequence of his 
irreligious teaching! ‘Certainly,’ says Baudin, “the suspicious 
Restoration displayed in this instance as clumsy and maladroit a 
hand as one might wish. In striking simultaneously at Bautain 
and at his friends, Jouffroy and Damiron, it was making martyrs 
for Eclecticism; and to cap the climax, it was reckoning among 
its adherents the philosopher who was getting ready to combat it.”** 
It seems likely that the alleged reason for Bautain’s suspension was 
only a pretext; his real offense lay in his former championship of 
liberty and equality. 

Bautain’s suspension was the occasion of a letter to the Rector 
of the Academy, in which he reaffirmed the main teachings of his 
Metaphysics course,*” defending himself against the charge of 
skepticism and urging that it was unbelievers and Protestants who 
had most reason to take umbrage at his teachings. In this letter, 
the outline of his whole system already appears; one may con- 
fidently say that, at this early date, July 1, 1822, not two years 
after his meeting with Mlle. Humann, his intellectual evolution 
was complete, and his philosophical system was already conceived 
in its definitive form, which not even the violence of ecclesiastical 
controversy was ever able seriously to alter. Certain passages in this 
letter form an almost indispensable introduction to his philosophy. 


* Baudin, I. preserved in Ms. (FB,V1). It is the 
The syllabus of this course has been chief source for Bautain’s Metaphysics. 


74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


“My teaching,” says Bautain,"® “whose form may appear novel, 
is simply Platonism purified by the light of Christianity.” Its novel 
form is chiefly due to the fact that there are two well-marked 
tendencies among his auditors, with which he has constantly to 
reckon: Kantianism and Protestantism. 


The system of Kant [he says] has brought back many minds from: 
gross materialism, not to faith or revelation, but to the conviction that 
reason could know nothing above the world of the senses, and to the 
despair of ever lifting themselves by its aid into the higher world. ‘That 
is the upshot of Kant’s Critigue of Pure Reason. Hs antinomies or con- 
tradictory arguments prove in a very powerful fashion that the human 
reason can demonstrate the pro and com with equal success so far as 
ultimate questions are concerned; . . . that there is therefore no sufficient 
reason, no solid ground, either for affirming or for denying that which 
cannot be perceived by the senses; and that thus indifferentism in things 
metaphysical and divine is the part of the sage. 

This decision of the Critical Philosophy puts an end to all dispute; but 
its consequence is that he who talks of invisible and supernatural things 
can be only a dreamer, since he occupies himself with objects imper- 
ceptible to the senses and undemonstrable by the reason, or else an esprit 


faible, a partisan of obscurantism, floundering to no purpose in the dark- 
ness of faith.*" 


Combine with this critical tendency the Protestant tendency, to 
rationalize the dogmas of religion, and one may imagine, says 
Bautain, the difficulty of talking at all to such an audience upon 
the subject of Metaphysics—“‘that is to say, concerning objects 
which cannot be perceived by the senses, and which nevertheless 
are the basis and reason of all that exists.” However, he deter- 
mined to attack his subject, and to do it in such a fashion as to 
show its vital human importance, being convinced from experience 
that the discussion “fof the possible and the impossible, of the 
necessary and the contingent, . . . of cause and effect,” and such- 
like abstractions, is perfectly fruitless, if not worse than fruitless, 
where matters of such high import are concerned. ‘‘What good is 
learning, if it does not make better men!”*® 

The truth which makes better men is found most clearly in 
the Gospels; but of course the direct exposition of Gospel truth 


* Fonds Bautain, U13. * Thidi,/3: 
7 FB, U2. 


THE, ODYSSEY OF AN. ARDENT -SOUL 75 


would hardly be classed as philosophy, “since this word signifies 
in our day something quite different from the love of wisdom.” 


I therefore [says Bautain] announced Plato as my chosen master; 
I expounded his teaching, as far as I could, in terms of the pure forms 
of mathematics; I made the light of the Gospel dominate the spirit and 
form of my course, and, without my speaking positively of the funda- 
mental dogmas of Christianity, they became evident through the facts 
of Nature and its laws,*® 


Christian in spirit and purpose, Platonic in its positive teachings, 
Kantian in its negative teachings—that is perhaps the simplest 
formula for Bautain’s philosophy. We may well postpone our 
study of its positive and constructive side, since it never came under 
discussion during Bautain’s lifetime, and, save by his close disciples, 
was never understood. Suffice it to say that the central principle 
of his constructive philosophy can be exactly defined in terms of 
his new attitude toward life. Before his conversion, he had been 
self-reliant, independent, a believer in the absolute spontaneity of 
the human will and reason; now he was humble, respectful to 
tradition and authority, conscious of his dependence upon powers 
outside of himself for guidance and enlightenment, and for life 
itself. He justifies this new attitude of his—surely a typically 
Catholic attitude—by adducing facts from every realm of nature 
and from the moral life of man to prove that passivity, receptivity, 
submissiveness, dependence, are everywhere the necessary conditions 
for the healthy growth of all finite creatures, and for the attain- 
ment of such limited freedom, spontaneity, and intelligence as is 
within the reach of man. But we cannot postpone altogether our 
discussion of the negative, Kantian, anti-intellectualistic side of 
Bautain’s philosophy; for all the outstanding events in his career, 
from now on, hinge upon it in one way or another. 

As we have seen, Bautain accepts Kant’s verdict, that the human 
reason is incapable of attaining to the knowledge of metaphysical 
ultimates. He goes farther: he applies this general verdict to the 
specific case of the traditional rational arguments for the existence 
of God, and, like Kant, pronounces them all invalid. 


© Thid., 4. 


76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


God, I told them, cannot be demonstrated by the reason; for there 
are but three ways of demonstrating a truth: equation, deduction, and 
induction. By egwation one determines an unknown term by a known 
term which is its equal, and to which one compares it. Well, “What 
is equal to God?” . . . With what term shall we compare Him who 
is above all terms? By deduction, one affirms the particular by showing 
it to be included in the general, in a higher term. What is that term 
which is higher than God? What shall be the premise of that deduction 
whose conclusion is to be God? By izduction one forms the general 
out of the particular; but the general is not the universal, and one does 
not make the Infinite out of the finite. Now, God is the Universal, 
the Infinite, the Absolute. Can reason then conceive him and embrace 
Him? Show me a process of reasoning which does not come under one 
of these categories.*° 


It was quite natural, he admits, for the inspector-general to 
suppose that teaching of this sort tended to undermine religious 
faith. Seeing the rational proofs of the existence of God disputed, 
and supposing that religious faith was based upon these proofs, he 
was quite logically led to ask, in a tone of indignation, what a 
man in the grip of despair or of passion might not do, if these 
bases of the faith were removed. But to this question—so nearly 
touching his own case—Bautain has ready a vigorous reply: 


¢ 
' 


I do not think that a passionate or wretched man can be calmed or 
consoled by arguments. Syllogisms have no power against the soul’s 
distress and the heart’s agitations. Something loftier and deeper is 
needed: faith in God, the feeling of His activity within us and His 
providence over us, surrender to the higher Will—none of them things 
that reasoning will ever give.*? 


The truth is that an altogether exaggerated importance has been 
ascribed to the traditional arguments for the existence of God. 
They are supposed to be convincing to unbelievers; whereas they 
never convince anybody who is not already convinced. Nay, more: 
it is possible to believe firmly in God while rejecting all rational 
arguments; and it is possible to lose all vital faith in God in the 
very act of proving His existence—or rather, the existence of a 
philosophical abstraction that goes by His name! 


© FB,U8. “ Thid., 9. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 77 


Yes, Monsieur, I have taught and I still teach that the human reason 
is not the judge of these things; that they are beyond its sphere and its 
range; that there is not a rational proof of the existence of God to which 
an equally cogent disproof cannot be opposed; and that all this polemic 
loads the mind without touching the heart, fills the memory without 
giving nourishment to the soul, makes man proud in his own conceit, 
and finally hardens him. When we speak of God, the question is not 
to prove that it is impossible He should not exist; the problem is to make 
men feel that He exists. . . . When a man knows God only through 
speculation, he becomes capable of disputing about God, but his will is 
not made better thereby.*? 


But if the knowledge of God (and other metaphysical ultimates ) 
is not to be gained by reasoning, how is it to be gained? When 
we accept the negative verdict of the Critical Philosophy, are we 
not doomed to skepticism? No, says Bautain. The Critical 
Philosophy simply closes one possible road to the knowledge of 
God; it shows that by the path of reason neither proof nor disproof 
of His existence is to be found. What then? Having found that 
rational arguments cancel each other and give us a sum of zero, 
we have simply to abandon the path of reason and try another way 
of reaching our objective: the way of self-mortification, of faith, 
of feeling, of immediate insight. 

First of all, self-mortification. ‘There are certain moral quali- 
fications for metaphysical research: “Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God.” ‘This truth is Platonic as well as Christ- 
ian; Plato is at one with the Fathers in insisting upon ascetic 
purification as an essential part of the training of the philosopher. 

Then, faith. Every science, remarks Bautain, is dogmatic at 
its point of departure; it takes all its fundamental concepts and 
first principles on faith. Hence metaphysics, the science of 
sciences, must also be dogmatic; it must postulate the existence of 
God, the Universal Being, or it will never get on, any more than 
logic would get on if the principles of rationality were called in 
question, or physics, if the existence of forces were to be denied. 


None of these sciences demonstrates, nor caz it demonstrate, the verid- 
ical nature of its object except by its evolution, progression, and de- 
velopment. Centre, unity, reason, force, are terms which represent the 


“ Ibid., 6. 


78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Idea of which the science and the doctrine are the development. No 
physics, no logic, no mathematics would be possible for one who refused 
to adhere to these names or terms. Similarly, no metaphysic is possible 
for one who refuses to recognize the name of Being, or the reality of 
His existence.*” 


Religious faith, however, is more than the provisional acceptance 
of terms, axioms, and postulates, to be tested by their ““develop- 
ments.” It is a feeling, says Bautain, a feeling for the truth, a 
quivering of the heart at the dimly felt presence of a supersensible 
reality. Every man has among his innate tendencies the capacity 
to react with a specific emotional thrill when the idea of God is 
presented to his attention. If he is receptive, if he does not 
insulate himself from reality by exalting himself as an autonomous 
being, endowed with absolute spontaneity, then sooner or later, 
directly or indirectly, the divine presence will manifest itself to 
him, producing in him a feeling which is implicitly an act of 
cognition, a religious thrill which is at the same time nascent 
knowledge of God. It is usually human teaching, or the sight of 
the majesty of the visible world of Nature, which first awakens 
this feeling; but man and Nature only mediately reveal a Reality 
which may be immediately experienced. This is the “true demon- 
stration” of the existence of God: ‘this demonstration of Himself 
which He makes by His action upon our hearts, and by the mediating 
action of Nature upon us.”’** 

Finally, zmsight. If reason can tell us nothing about the super- 
sensible world, if it can cognize only sensible things and relations 
between them, this does not mean that we can have no clear knowl- 
edge of ultimate realities. Blind faith and purblind feeling must 
be our guides at first; but for the pure in heart, faith always leads 
to sight at last, and the idea of God, conceived at the moment of 
the heart’s first spontaneous reaction, unfolds into a veritable science 
of God. “Taste, says Bautain; “then only [will you] see how 
gracious the Lord is.”*? In other words, knowledge of God is 
possible, but only for religious souls, who are willing at first to 
take his existence on faith, as they take the existence of other minds. 


© FR, US. * Ibid., 6. 
med fT aie 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL ve 


Religious experience furnishes the indispensable data for religious 
knowledge. 


I thought therefore [concludes Bautain] thet in our day it was necessary 
to follow a different road, in order to give my young men a complete 
conviction of [the reality of] God. I spoke to their hearts more than 
to their reason. I did not prove God to them by arguments; but I made 
known His name to them, and I tried to reawaken their feelings. I 
showed them the divine activity working upon them from the moment 
of their birth, seeking to penetrate their heart. . .. 1 had the joy of 
seeing my words take effect, and the seed take root in the soil which 
has been allotted to me. Doubts were dissipated, and a sweet and simple 
faith scattered the clouds of reason. 

My method seems to me, moreover, to be in harmony with religious 
teaching. We find in the Gospel neither system, nor theory, nor syl- 
logism, nor argumentation. . . . We do not find that the apostles used 
syllogisms to support what they proclaimed. . . . The Spirit does not 
dispute, nor does it cry aloud in the streets and the market-places; it 
gently steals into men’s souls like a soft breath. It is thus, also, that 
ministers of the Gospel teach God to the children. They are not plied 
with syllogisms and arguments; they would not be capable of under- 
standing them—and nevertheless they feel God, they believe in Him, 
and the virtues proper to their age . . . prove the reality of their faith. 
It is possible then to believe in God without physical, moral, or meta- 
physical arguments,*® 


This letter, as we have said, marks the culmination of Bautain’s 
intellectual evolution; all his fundamental ideas appear in it. It 
should be added, however, that they are not yet clearly formulated 
or widely applied. As Bautain would say, the Idea had not yet 
fully evolved; it remained in the realm of Metaphysics, and had 
not yet descended into the realms of Cosmology, Ethics, and 
Politics. In all these fields—not to speak of Logic, Biology, 
Psychology, Pedagogy, and Philology (!)—it was to manifest itself 
during the next few years. 

We are in fact approaching the most fruitful period in Bautain’s 
life: the period of the founding of the “Strasbourg school,” and 
of the growing fame of the “Strasbourg Philosophy.” It begins 
with his suspension, in 1822, and ends with the issuing, in 1834, 
of the Bishop’s Avertissement condemning his philosophy. 


ae (SRM ob 


80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The attempt of the Government to suppress Bautain’s teaching 
was actually the means of widening and deepening its influence. 
Certain of his former students came to him and asked for private 
instruction. Acceding to their request, he opened an informal 
class in Philosophy at Mlle. Humann’s house in the Rue de la 
Toussaint. The project had a startling success. A motley group 
of “French, Germans, English, Russians; Catholics, Protestants, 
Greek schismatics, and Jews’’*’ was soon to be seen flocking’ regu- 
larly to Mlle. Humann’s to sit at the feet of the new prophet. 

It was, in fact, in the réle of prophet that Bautain now appeared. 
Stripping away all academic formalities, he preached his new 
philosophy. as a sort of Gospel, which could solve the perplexities 
and warm the hearts of all the youth. Many were repelled by 
his teaching; the group never became large; but those who remained 
became genuine disciples, or at least prospective disciples, hanging 
upon every word that fell from the Master’s lips. 

The phenomenon was not uncommon in that age of Romanti- 
cism. The idea of the inspired genius, charged with a message 
from Heaven, was not confined to Christian circles. “The solemn 
egotism of Victor Hugo, delivering himself of oracular utterances 
to a hushed circle of reverent admirers, was characteristic of the 
epoch.** It was a generation afflicted with mal de siécle; and the 
one hope which relieved the Romantic melancholy then so assidu- 
ously cultivated by the well-bred youth was the hope that some 
inspired prophet and leader might at any moment arise. Wherever 
a word of calm assurance was spoken, there were those who were 
ready to accept it with implicit faith. Franz Baader had his circle 
of admirers; so had Lamennais; but nowhere was there a more 
worshipful band than this which gathered about Louis Bautain and 
Mlle. Humann—St. Augustine and his mother Monica, as many 
called them*“— in the little house on the Rue de la Toussaint. 

As in every band of disciples, there was an inner group which 
lived on terms of peculiar intimacy with the Master, and with his 


“De Régny, 88. 

Hugo once, it is said, announced to 
his disciples that he believed in God. 
Silence followed the utterance; the poet 
continued to ruminate, with his chin in 
his beard. “Merveil!” whispered a young 


woman, with a look of awe upon her 
countenance: “a God who believes in 
God!” 

” Others, less respectfully, referred to 
Bautain as “the new Pythagoras.” (Ens. 
Phil. B, 631-634.) 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 81 


“spiritual mother.”’ In the early days of the “Strasbourg School,” 
this group consisted of four young men: Adolphe Carl (Mlle. 
Humann’s nephew) and—curiously enough—three young Jews, 
Theodore Ratisbonne, Isadore Goschler, and Jules Lewel (or 
Lével). It was during the gradual conversion of these three young 
Jews to the Catholic faith that the letters were written which later 
were collected and published under the name of Philosophie du 
Christianisme’°—the classical source for the doctrines of the School, 
and by all odds the most fascinating work which Bautain ever 
produced. ‘The title of it may seem a bit pretentious, for a col- 
lection of letters; but it is really quite exact, for a complete 
Christian philosophy of religion is developed, bit by bit, as the 
correspondence proceeds. Asa matter of fact, the letters were not 
occasional at all; the five parties to the discussion saw each other 
practically every day. ‘They were simply following a not uncom- 
mon convention of the age of Romanticism, and conversing on 
paper—feeling freer under those circumstances to disembosom 
themselves to one another. Each takes a pen name; Bautain is 
“the Master”; Carl is “Adolphe”; Ratisbonne is ‘‘Adéodat’’; 
Goschler, “Julien”; Lewel, “Eudore.” The three Jews reveal their 
religious aspirations and perplexities; the Master calmly expounds 
the Truth, meeting each objection as it arises, showing no proselyt- 
ing zeal and merely urging them to be true to the faith of their 
fathers and the aspirations of their own hearts; Adolphe acts as 
intermediary, presenting the objections of the Jews to the Master, 
and showing how the Master’s replies meet the objections. In the 
end, persuasion is complete: Ratisbonne, Goschler, and Lewel all 
come to regard Christianity as the crown of Judaism, and, to the 
consternation of their relatives, openly embrace the Catholic faith. 
Thus the New Apologetics won its first triumph. 

The Philosophy of Christianity was not published at this time; 
the letters seemed too sacredly private for publication, and it was 
only the heat of controversy and the threatened dissolution of the 
Strasbourg School which induced Bautain to lay them before the 
world.** During this same period, however, he was publishing 


© Abbrev.: P&il. Chr. form. For complete list of Bautain’s 
*In 1835. A few selected passages published works, see de Régny, 476. 
were published in 1830, in pamphlet 


82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


several works which mark significant stages in the development of 
his philosophical system. In 1825, he published a slim volume of 
aphorisms and short essays, setting forth some of his leading ideas 
in popular style.°* In 1826, on finishing his medical course, he 
presented as his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine a 
fragment of a philosophy of nature, Propositions générales sur la 
vie, in which the fundamental idea of his philosophy, life as con- 
ditional spontaneity, receives exact biological formulation.** On 
the basis of this biological formula, a genetic psychology is worked 
out, designed to serve as a foundation for a philosophy of education, 
a theory of knowledge, and a metaphysic—all to the great mystifi- 
In 1827 appeared his brilliant 
Discours sur la morale de PEvangile comparée a la’ morale des 
philosophes, which was awarded a gold medal by the Société 
Académique de la Marne.** Here the genetic psychology worked 
out in the Propositions is made the basis of a classification and 
critique of some of the leading ethical systems—each corresponding 


cation of the examining committee! 


to one of the stages in the process of mental development, which 
culminates in the Christian stage. Finally—to complete our pic- 
ture of Bautain’s multiform activities at this most fertile period 
in his career—in his lectures at the University, where he had been 
reinstated in 1824, he was developing a complete philosophy, which 
he intended to publish later in systematic form. He offered a 
new course on Logic in 1824; on Ethics in 1825; on Anthropology 
(including Psychology) in 1826-27. 

Meanwhile, the other members of the School of Strasbourg had 
been applying the principles of the Master’s philosophy in other 
fields. Adolphe Carl won a prize in 1824 with an essay on the 
question whether rhetoric or logic should come first in public 
education. “The reader may not perceive that this is the question 
whether faith precedes reason in another form; but Carl perceived 
it, and made the essay the occasion of a new application of the 


“Variétés Philosophiques, Strasbourg, 
Silbermann, 1825. Abbrev.: Variétés. 


by subjectivating the objective and by 
objectivating the subjective.” (33). I 


<Man lives only by intussusception 
of the life which surrounds and _ pene- 
trates him, and by exposition, emission, 
or radiation of the life he receives and 
has received. In other terms, man lives, 
in his soul, in his mind, and in his body, 


shall give a good deal of attention to 


the Propositions in chapter 11. Abbrev.: 
Props. 

™ Strasbourg, Février, 1827. Abbrev.: 
Mor. Ev. P. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 83 


Strasbourg Philosophy. In 1827, he published two theses on The 
Origin and Nature of Language and Articulate Language, which 
are our chief sources for the linguistic philosophy of the school; 
and in 1828, having finished a course jn medicine, in emulation 
of the Master, he published a thesis entitled Du matérialisme en 
médecine, in which he defended medical science against the charge 
of materialism, and sketched an idealistic theory of mind and body 
reminiscent of the Propositions sur la vie. Ratisbonne and Gosch- 
ler were meanwhile pursuing legal studies; their theses, on Les 
obligations qui naissent du mariage and La puissance paternelle, 
were both strongly imbued with the principles of the school.” 
Later, during the transition period before their definitive conver- 
sion, they carried on a remarkable work of reorganization and 
reform in the Jewish schools of Strasbourg, applying the Bautainian 
philosophy to the problem of moral and religious education. The 
principles on which they proceeded are admirably stated in a 
pamphlet of Ratisbonne’s, published in 1828: Essai sur Péducation 
morale.’° This educational reform movement among the Stras- 
bourg Jews long outlasted the conversion of its two leaders. 

It is conceivable that Bautain might have gone on thus, tranquilly 
and unofficially exerting his influence upon the youth of Strasbourg, 
and contributing through his lectures and writings to the general 
movement of French thought. If he had done so, we should 
undoubtedly have had from his pen a more nearly complete and 
a better balanced system of philosophy than that which he actually 
left behind him. As a private individual, he might have. been 
allowed a degree of latitude in philosophical speculation not per- 
mitted to a priest. As in the case of men like de Maistre and 
Ballanche, the Church would have been too grateful for the 
genuinely religious and Catholic tendency of his thinking to be 
querulous about matters of detail; a layman might be excused for 
theological inaccuracies on the ground of ignorance.”’ 

But instead of choosing the path of prudence and tranquillity, 


All three theses published, Silber- exercises no control over lay opinion. 


mann, 1827, 1828. 

Strasbourg, Février, 1828. Crowned 
by the Strasbourg Society of Arts and 
Sciences. 

* This is not to say that the Church 


Augustin Bonnetty, editor of the Annales 
de Philosophie Chrétienne, was forced to 
sign a paper in 1855 recanting certain 
anti-intellectualist views borrowed from 
Bautain. (De Régny, chap. xxi.) 


84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Bautain deliberately chose, with a courage that one cannot but 
admire, to risk the rocks and shoals of an ecclesiastical career. The 
purity and nobility of his motives cannot be questioned. He was 
convinced that the Catholic faith was the great panacea for the 
spiritual cravings and moral ills of his generation. His philosophy 
had been the means of winning a considerable group of uncom- 
monly brilliant young men to the Catholic faith. Had he the. 
right to hide his candle under a bushel? Might it not be that if 
the Church were to adopt his method of presenting the faith, the 
whole intellectual aristocracy of France could be reclaimed for 
Christianity? But this would require a sweeping reform in the 
whole method of teaching philosophy in the ecclesiastical schools; 
and only a priest could initiate such a reform. Hence, resisting 
all the entreaties and warnings of his academic associates, he applied 
for ordination. 

Bautain cherished no illusions as to the difficulties he was likely 
to encounter in attempting to reform the teaching of philosophy 
in the Church. In a letter to Riambourg, after stating that he 
had entered the Church because “in my profound conviction, there 
is no salvation for mankind and in particular for the present 
century and for our nation, except in her,” he continues as follows: 


When I entered her doors, I was not ignorant of all that lay ahead 
of me there: I knew that the narrowest Rationalism was devastating her 
and drying up her vital sap—and certainly, after drinking the cup of 
Rationalism down to the dregs in philosophy, I was not going to seek it 
in theology, I was not going to caress it and praise it. On the contrary, 
I was going to combat it by all the means God gave me, because I am 
firmly convinced that it is the greatest plague of ecclesiastical instruction.*® 


Controversy and strife awaited him; he knew that from the start. 
So did Mlle. Humann. When he communicated to her his decision 
to enter the priesthood, 


she appeared [says Bautain] neither surprised nor overjoyed. “I expected 
it,” she said to me; ... “1 am more moved than I can tell you; for 
if I hope much, I also fear much. We will consult God together.” 
Some days afterward we went to a sanctuary which was celebrated in 
that region, where we received the Sacrament with this intent; and 


 FB,K, Cahier Il, 18; Cf. ibid., Cahier I, 15-18, Letter to Guizot. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 85 


when I asked her on our return what God had put into her heart con- 
cerning me, she answered me simply with this word of St. Paul: “I will 
show him what he will have to suffer for my name’s sake.’’®® 


Bautain’s intention to enter the priesthood had to be deferred 
for a short time, for he had no mind to have his schemes of reform 
blocked at the start by falling into the hands of unsympathetic 
superiors. ‘Ah, if there were a bishop who understood my posi- 
tion!” he would sigh. What was his delight when he heard that 
Mgr. Lepappe de Trévern, a prelate interested in the promotion 
of higher education among the clergy, had been appointed Bishop 
of Strasbourg. Bautain went to his new Bishop at once and told 
him frankly that, though he and his whole band of disciples felt 
strongly drawn to the priesthood, they had no sympathy with the 
prevalent mode of instruction at the Grand Séminaire de Strasbourg, 
and “if it were absolutely necessary to pass through that gate, they 
would give up entering the clergy.” Monseigneur was not 
shocked; he agreed that ecclesiastical studies were in a deplorable 
state of degeneration, and mentioned that he was hoping to found 
a Maison de Hautes Etudes Ecclésiastiques at Molsheim. If M. 
Bautain and his young followers wished to train themselves for 
the priesthood, they might go there. The Bishop’s suggestion was 
seized at once; the first pupil to be admitted to the new school was 
Goschler, who fled there late in 1827 after breaking all ties with 
his parents and with the Synagogue. For him, and for Lewel 
and Ratisbonne, whose break with their kin came a few months 
later, Mgr. de Trévern prescribed a severe course of theological 
studies; but Bautain and Carl, who presented themselves at Mol- 
sheim in August, 1828, received the tonsure and the minor orders 
on the third day after their arrival, were ordained sub-deacons on 
the fourth day, and then, after a two months’ retreat under the 
direction of an old priest, were excused from further studies on 
the ground that they were already sufficiently prepared. November 
saw Bautain preaching, while still a deacon, at the church of Saint- 
Pierre-le-Jeune, near Mlle. Humann’s. His success was immedi- 
ate; the city was profoundly stirred. Ordained a priest in Decem- 
ber, he was soon called to preach at the Cathedral; the Bishop, 


® De Régny, 147. 


86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


pleased at the results, bestowed upon him the title of Honorary 
Canon. 

Meanwhile, the little ‘Society’ at Mlle. Humann’s grew and 
thrived. New recruits were added to the circle, among them 
Alphonse Gratry, destined to be the most famous of Bautain’s 
pupils; new conversions took place, among them that of Jules 
Lewel’s brother Nestor. In 1830, the Bishop gave the Society a 
most signal token of his confidence: he gave over to it the com- 
plete control of the Petit Séminaire, which had to be reorganized 
on account of the changes introduced by the Revolution of July. 
Now, it seemed, Bautain was in a position to begin the reform of 
ecclesiastical education of which he had dreamed. If he had not 
control of the Grand Séminaire, where theological instruction was 
given, he had control of the school where young aspirants to the 
priesthood had their whole mental outlook determined. It would 
be hard for the Grand Séminaire to undo what the Petit Séminaire 
had done. The enthusiasm of the band rose high at this great 
opportunity. They applied themselves to the task of reorganizing 
the studies at the Little Seminary with such vigor that all Stras- 
bourg was soon impressed with the results attained. Then came 
a chance to extend the reform to new spheres. In 1829, Isidore 
Goschler had been called to Besancon to become professor of 
philosophy in the Collége. In 1832, Cardinal de Rohan invited 
him to take charge of the organization of a Maison des Hautes 
Etudes at Besancon, similar to the one at Molsheim. With him 
went Henri de Bonnechose, a talented young lawyer whom he 
had recently led to join Bautain’s band. 

Mlle. Humann saw with great joy these signs of the growing 
influence of her spiritual children; but looking forward to a day 
when the bond of common loyalty to her would be removed, and 
when the very success of the band might lead to the scattering of 
its members to various positions of authority, and so dissipate its 
influence, she urged that the Messieurs de Saint-Louis, as they had 
come to be called,” should bind themselves together, not exactly 
into a religious order or community, but into a sort of spiritual 


From the Eglise St.-Louis, to whose mann and Louis Bautain (not to mention 
parish the Petit Séminaire appertained; Mgr. Colmar) had St. Louis for their 
also from the fact that both Louise Hu- patron saint. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 87 


family. Accordingly, on March 16, 1832, the brothers all signed 
a Pacte de famille, drawn up by their spiritual mother, pledging 
themselves, among other things, to live together, as far as possible, 
and to hold all goods in common; “to recognize and respect the 
hierarchical order which God by his calling had established amongst 
the brothers” (meaning that Bautain, who was first called, was 
always to be obeyed as the “elder brother”); and “never to court 
voluntarily, by any act or word, any promotion or advancement 
whatsoever in the Church.”** Thus bound together by a free 
promise of mutual loyalty and affection, it was hoped that the 
band might survive the shock of Mlle. Humann’s death, and 
weather all the unknown rocks and shoals that lay ahead. ‘The 
precaution, as it proved, was not unnecessary! 

We have now returned to the point in Bautain’s career at which 
we first made his acquaintance: the years 1833 and 1834. During 
these years he reached the high-water mark of his fame and in- 
fluence. In 1833 his essay On the Teaching of Philosophy in 
France in the Nineteenth Century brought him into international 
prominence, and his philosophy began to be discussed in all the 
religious periodicals. “The students at Paris, as we have seen, 
coupled his name with that of Lacordaire, in asking for a new 
type of preaching at Notre Dame. ‘The star of Lamennais was 
waning, blood-red, in the West; all eyes turned to this new star 
that was rising in the East. For the moment, it seemed that Bau- 
tain had all France at his feet, listening for his new Evangel, so 
confidently promised but as yet so imperfectly developed in his 
fragmentary writings. For the moment, his dream of rejuvenating 
the whole intellectual life of the Church, and restating Catholic 
philosophy in a shape adapted to the needs of the age, seemed 
possible of realization. “Théodule Foisset had already pointed to 
the school of Strasbourg as the “foremost” example of the vitality 
and progressiveness of Catholic thought, and the best refutation of 
the charge that Catholicism appealed only to the ignorant.*? Now 
he trumphantly announced that the man of the hour had come, 
and was ready to speak: | 


At last M. Bautain has called to mind the hopes which were built 


@ Rev. Europ., V1, 33-34. © Thid. 


88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


upon him toward 1829, when M. Cousin used to say to him, “My task 
is to write the history of philosophy, but you will create a philosophy.” 
A large number of Catholics (and this fact is personally known to the 
author of this article) have been pressing him urgently for a long time 
to publish a résumé of his lectures. He is about to yield to their en- 
treaties. . . . You see, we have not here the commonplaces of the 
preacher. Neither have we the burning invective of the Essai de Pin- 
différence.°* We have a man who has lived with his century, who 
knows it of long acquaintance, and who tells it what it is, without bitter- 
ness; so that one has only to look within oneself a moment, and con- 
sult one’s own observations, in order to cry out, as before a speaking 
likeness, ‘“That’s it, to be sure!” 


What Bautain’s influence might have been, had he published 
his lecture courses just at this moment, it is hard to calculate. 
They would certainly have been read with the greatest avidity. 
If he had realized how soon the pall of disfavor and oblivion was 
to shut down upon him, he would surely have occupied himself 
otherwise, in those crucial years of 1833 and 1834, than with 
the writing of two or three controversial pamphlets that only 
helped to precipitate the storm of hostility. It must be said that, 
for a would-be reformer, he showed little tact. He seemed to 
feel that before he could lay the details of his constructive system 
before the public, he must first complete the work of demolishing 
everything else in sight. “There was not one important school of 
thought that he did not attack. For his former associates, the 
Eclectics, he showed no mercy; Victor Cousin was cut to the 
quick. For the time-honored Scholastic arguments in defense of 
Christianity he had only ridicule; the cry of “heresy” began to 
arise from the seminaries. For the school of Lamennais, to which 
most of the progressive young priests still belonged, he showed no 
sympathy at all; and the mercilessness with which he exposed the 
fallacies of the “common-sense” philosophy thus alienated from 
him the liberal group which might have been expected to support 
him. : 

The first rumbles of the gathering storm began to be heard 
even before the publication of the essay “On the Teaching of 


® The reference is to Lamennais’s * Rev. Europ., VI, 154, 155. 
Essai de Vindifférence en matiére de 
religion. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 89 


Philosophy in France.” At Strasbourg, complaints began to be 
sent to the Bishop about the teaching of Philosophy at the Petit 
Séminaire. ‘The teaching was in French instead of Latin; the 
traditional text-books were not used;. logical disputations were 
omitted. Monseigneur ordered the use of the classical Philosophie 
de Lyon,* and the resumption of Latin disputations. At Besancon, 
Goschler found himself faced with the opposition of both teachers 
and students, in spite of the Cardinal. ‘The teachers resented his 
attacks upon Scholasticism; the students, his attacks upon Lamen- 
nais. A revolt of the students took place one day, obviously with 
the connivance of some of the faculty; and at the death of the 
Cardinal in February, 1833, Goschler and Bonnechose returned 
to Strasbourg. Letters accusing them of heresy were sent to the 
Bishop of Strasbourg, and to Rome. When Bautain went to Paris 
later in the year, he was conscious that hostile influences had been 
at work there too. . 

The £ssay itself brought forth many unfriendly comments. An 
anonymous follower of Lamennais, after taking a trip to Stras- 
bourg in order to spy upon the professor in the class-room and 
get incriminating evidence if possible, published a hastily-written 
book against him—650 pages of acid but often telling criticism, 
mingled with scurrilous personal abuse. This was the only shot 
that came from the camp of Lamennais; but from the camp of 
the Scholastics there came continuous rounds of artillery. The 
Ami de la religion, a prominent Catholic periodical, showed itself 
hostile to Bautain from the moment the Essay appeared; and, from 
that time on, published a series of short editorials and long articles 
against him. The most powerful of these articles seem to have 
emanated from the Grand Séminaire at Strasbourg, where, as we 
have seen, a Neo-Scholastic movement of real acumen and dis- 
crimination was going on, under the leadership of Raess and 
Liebermann. ‘To them, the somewhat vague Romanticism of 
Bautain and his school seemed nothing but intellectual slovenliness, 
tending to blur all the firm outlines of theological thinking and 
to introduce endless errors under cover of darkness. Above all, 


© Institutiones philosophicae, auctori- 
tate D.D. Archiépiscopi Lugdunensis, 
1792. Ascribed to Father Valla. 


90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


his attack upon the rational proofs of religion seemed to them to 
be dangerous in the extreme; for they were not ready like him 
to appeal to intuition, and mistrusted the scientific analogies by 
which he sought to show the accord of the divine and natural orders. 

It was the influence of the Grand Séminaire, seconded by that 
of the Strasbourg clergy, who disliked the clannishness of the 
Messteurs de St.-Louis, and envied their success, which gradually 
alienated the Bishop’s regard for Bautain. At first he contented 
himself with opposing Bautain’s anti-intellectualism, in public and 
private discussion. Bautain, always keen for an argument on this 
question, gave him as good as he sent. ‘Then, becoming alarmed 
at certain theological consequences of Bautain’s philosophy, he 
drew up six questions and demanded specific answers to them. 
Bautain complied—at length. ‘Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, 
in September, 1834, the Bishop broke off what looked like a 
friendly philosophical discussion and issued an Avertissement to all 
the clergy of the diocese, warning them against the dangerous 
heresies contained in Bautain’s teachings. Copies were sent to 
Rome, and to all the bishops of France. Three weeks later the 
Messieurs de St.-Louis were ordered to leave the Petit Séminaire, 
and deprived of the right to preach. 

A controversy thus began which held public attention for six 
long years. Rome acknowledged receipt of the Avertissement, but 
judiciously refrained from making definite pronouncement on the 
merits of the question at issue. Hence Bautain did not feel called 
upon to submit, and continued the debate. 


Then [as Professor Baudin picturesquely describes it] one saw Stras- 
bourg divide into two camps, where there were terribly extemporaneous 
theologians and philosophers in abundance, and these not the least ardent. 
The newspapers intervened, of course; pamphlets multiplied; and the 
debate spread to wider and wider circles. Bautain had little success in 
France, where people have too much of an esteem for Reason to listen 
willingly when she is slandered. In Germany, the Tiibingen faculty, 
with the celebrated Moehler, came out in his fayor, and sent him a 
Doctor’s diploma in Theology. The Bonn faculty, on the contrary, 
with Hermes, came out against him. And the whole of Christian Europe, 
Protestant as well as Catholic, kept its eyes attentively fixed upon 
Strasbourg and its philosopher.*® 


 Baudin, I, 22. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 91 


The mention of Hermes perhaps suggests the reason why Rome 
remained neutral in the affaire Bautain. Professor Hermes of 
Bonn had been maintaining a thorough-going rationalism; accord- 
ing to him, all the truths of religion are such that, when one tries 
the experiment of Cartesian doubt upon them, they reaffirm them- 
selves by the unaided light of reason. He had thus been led to 
rationalize the Catholic faith to such an extent that in his system 
the traditional doctrines were hardly recognizable. The Avertisse- 
ment of Mgr. de ‘T'révern came to Rome just when the writings 
of Hermes were being examined there; they were officially con- 
demned in 1835, despite long-continued protests on the part of 
his many followers.°’ ‘This condemnation gave Bautain a distinct 
tactical advantage. He accused his opponents, who maintained the 
powers of the reason against his attacks, of falling into Hermesian- 
ism; which put them in a very delicate situation.°* If Rome were 
to condemn Bautain and uphold the Bishop, it could do so only by 
carefully distinguishing between the illegitimate rationalism of 
Hermes and the legitimate rationalism of the Bishop. This was 
not easy to do; for the extreme anti-intellectualism of Bautain had 
provoked an equally extreme rationalism in the Bishop, and there 
was to be witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of an ecclesiastic 
exalting Reason above Faith, while endeavoring to demolish the 
position of a philosopher who exalted Faith above Reason! Add 
to this the fact that the Bishop was a Gallican, while Bautain was 
a loyal Ultramontanist, and it becomes perfectly comprehensible 
that the Holy See should have refrained for six years from all 
intervention in the dispute. 

During the heat of the controversy, Bautain published his 
Philosophie du Christianisme, with an impressive Introduction by 
Bonnechose, and full accounts by Ratisbonne, Goschler, and Lewel, 
of the circumstances of their conversions. His object was to give 
concrete proof of the legitimacy and effectiveness of his non- 
argumentative apologetic, by showing how it satisfied the question- 
ings and religious longings of these typical young Romanticists. 


Hermes had died in 1831; but his 8% One of Hermes’ followers actually 
teachings continued to exercise a con- wrote a book aiming to prove the identity 
trolling influence at Bonn. of Hermes?’ position with that of the 


Bishop. (See de Régny, 236.) 


Oz THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The Bishop countered by appointing a committee of professors 
from the Grand Séminaire, to pronounce upon the orthodoxy of 
the Philosophie du Christianisme, and other published works of 
Bautain—a committee which in due time, reported that in Bau- 
tain’s writings “not a dogma, not a mystery is presented in its 
purity, without some admixture of error.”°? Meanwhile, the 
Messieurs de St.-Lowis, deprived of their ecclesiastical functions, 
occupied themselves with the founding of a whole series of primary 
and secondary schools, where their pedagogical principles were 
worked out even more consistently than at the Petit Séminaire. 

The general impression among the French Catholics was that 
each of the parties in the controversy was contending for a vital 
principle. Accordingly, various friendly mediators offered their 
services—among them Mgr. Donnet, Bishop Coadjutor of Nancy, 
and M. Choppin d’Arnouville, prefect of the Lower Rhine. 
Several times Bautain and his followers signed propositions which 
seemed to settle everything amicably; but each time the Bishop, 
seeking to force a more abject and humiliating surrender, made 
some unreasonable modification in the formula of submission or 
some impossible demand which opened the breach once more. On 
one occasion, a formula of complete submission had been signed, 
and congratulations were pouring in upon Bautain for his ex- 
emplary behavior, when a Protestant paper, twitting him on having 
sacrificed his principles, called forth from Bonnechose an inju- 
dicious letter in which he maintained that nothing essential had 
been sacrificed—which of course provoked a new outburst of wrath 
on the part of the Bishop. 

Finally, on the advice of Lacordaire, who had heard from 
authoritative sources that Bautain’s books seemed likely to be put 
on the /ndex, Bautain and Bonnechose set out for Rome to lay 
their case before the Pope. ‘They were kindly received, for their 
attitude was humble and respectful; and the examination of the 
Philosophie du Christianisme—which was, in fact, already before 
the Congregation of the Index—was, at Bautain’s request, con- 
fided to an Italian prelate, Cardinal Mezzofante. Months passed, 
and no decision was reached. Finally, Bautain and Bonnechose 


® Rapport 4 Mgr. PEvéque de Stras- tain. Publié par ordre de Sa Grandeur. 
bourg sur les écrits de M. PAbbé Bau- Strasbourg, 1838. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 93 


signed a blanket agreement, pledging themselves in advance to 
submit to whatever decision might be rendered. The examination 
of the book was then handed over to the noted theologian Perrone, 
who had already had several friendly discussions with Bautain. 
The Pope gave them his Apostolic Benediction, and they departed, 
hopeful, but still doubtful of their. fate. They had occupied 
themselves during their sojourn in Rome by consulting many 
theologians on the orthodoxy of their position; and it seems clear 
that Bautain had come to recognize the extreme and paradoxical 
nature of many of his views. He had been made to feel his 
temerity in writing upon semi-theological themes without ever 
having had a thorough course in theology; and his mystic certitude 
of the truth of his philosophy had been sadly shaken. He went 
to Rome still believing he was an inspired genius; he came back 
conscious of his fallibility and doubtful of his most cherished ideas. 

Returning to Strasbourg in this chastened mood, he found the 
Bishop exhausted by the controversy, and disposed to settle the 
matter by appointing a Coadjutor to whom the whole settlement 
could be left. For a time, it looked as if it might be made easy 
for Bautain to’submit, for his friend the Abbé Affre was proposed 
as Coadjutor; but Affre was made Archbishop of Paris, and Bautain 
found himself, instead, in the hands of his chief opponent, the 
Abbé Raess. “There was nothing to do but to sign Raess’s severe 
- formula of recantation with as much grace as possible. “The whole 
band subscribed to the formula on September 8, 1840. Thus ended 
the controversy, and thus ended Bautain’s attempt to reform the 
teaching of philosophy in the Catholic seminaries. 

Since Bautain owes his somewhat dubious fame among Catholics 
to the fact that his name is attached to certain heretical propositions, 
we may as well give this formula of recantation. It consists of 
six propositions, corresponding almost exactly with the six questions 
cited in the Avertissement. The Bishop’s original position is re- 
affirmed without compromise, save that, in the first proposition, the 
emphatic word alone is omitted after the word reasoning. 


1. Reasoning can prove with certitude the existence of God and the 
infinity of his perfections. Faith is a heavenly gift which presupposes 
revelation; it cannot properly therefore be appealed to in proving the 
existence of God to an atheist. 


94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


2. The divinity of the Mosaic revelation is proved with certitude 
by the oral and written tradition of the Synagogue and of Christianity. 

3. The proof drawn from the miracles of Jesus Christ, obvious and 
striking to those who were eye-witnesses, has wot lost its force, with its 
éclat, for subsequent generations. . . . 

4. One has no right to expect an unbeliever to admit the resurrection 
of our divine Saviour, before furnishing him with certain proofs thereof ; 
and these proofs are deduced by reasoning. 


5. In these various questions reason precedes faith, and should lead 
us to it. 


6. However enfeebled and darkened our reason may have become 
through original sin, it retains enough clearness and force to guide us 
with certitude to the existence of God, to the revelation made to the 
Jews by Moses, and to that made to the Christians by our adorable 
God-man.*° 


‘The reader will note that all the heresies recanted under these 
six heads can be reduced to one: the effort to displace the old 
apologetic, based upon miracle, prophecy, oral and written testi- 
mony, and other forms of external evidence, and to replace it by 
an apologetic in which the constant appeal is to experience, and 
in which the skeptic is invited to believe nothing which he cannot 
personally verify. As Moehler puts it in his letter to Bautain, 


You are making war upon a Theology whose characteristic mark I 
might describe as the search for external demonstrations; upon a Theology 
which furnishes a mass of proofs, but does not acquaint one with the 
thing itself which is to be proved, . . . and is capable rather of hanging 
Christianity externally on a man, than of transforming the man himself 
into a Christian. . . . In contrast with such an art of external propping 
up, which does not enter into the living spirit of the Gospel, you are 
endeavoring to let it unfold itself, and thus establish itself through its 
own strength, convinced that when set upon its own feet it will best 
demonstrate its invincible strength and eternal power to the unprejudiced 
mind, through the organic unfolding of its divine content. . . . Since 
it has a vital relationship to our spirit, nothing proves the truth so well as 
the truth itself; whereas the use of proofs which lie without and beside 
the truth is just for that reason not properly adapted to bring spirit, 
heart, and mind to a decision for the truth, to bring the divine Word 


™De Régny, 288-289. See also Den- sion, based not on the authentic proposi- 
zinger’s Enchiridion, which, as de Régny tions of 1840, but upon the propositions 
points out, gives a slightly different ver- which were subscribed to in 1835. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 95 


into our own inner soul as a fruitful seed and at once to call forth a vital 
conviction. “2 


This is indeed a serious heresy. It was a sure instinct which led 
the Bishop to single out this aspect of Bautain’s teaching for his 
condemnation; for Bautain was undoubtedly, in just this aspect of 
his philosophy, a Modernist before the Modernists. His objection 
to the Scholastic apologetic is precisely the objection which Auguste 
Sabatier and other Protestant Modernists urge against the Old 
Theology: that it depends on extrinsic instead of intrinsic evidence 
to prove the validity of its dogmas.’* Opposition to the Scholastic 
method was of course Bautain’s chief offence. Nothing is said 
of this offence in the formula of 1840; but when Augustin 
Bonnetty later took up Bautain’s accusations against the Scholastics, 
he was required to recant.”* 

It may be asked how Bautain could possibly subscribe to proposi- 
tions which ran so completely counter to his whole life’s enterprise. 
To non-Catholics, an act of this sort is always a mystery; and it 
is always a matter of curiosity to know by what process of reasoning 
a man comes to justify in his own eyes the acceptance of such a 
crushing humiliation. In Bautain’s case, the motives are fairly 
evident. In the first place, humility was the very corner-stone 
of his philosophy. Since his conversion, the very notion of the 
“autonomy” of the individual reason and conscience was anathema 
to him. Note the words with which he concluded his Letter to 
the Rector in 1822. After saying that he had set forth his teach- 


ings with “complete conviction” of their truth, he adds: 


But I do not forget that I have superiors, and that the Christian’s first 
duty is deference to authority. If therefore the competent authority, 
after examining my paragraphs, which I am ready to submit to its in- 
spection, declares my teaching harmful, and forbids me to continue it, I 
shall subscribe unreservedly to its judgment, and shall follow only that 
method and line of work which it is pleased to prescribe for me.” 


™™Moehler, J. A., Schriften und 8 See the formula, quoted by de Régny, 
Aufsdtze, ed. Déllinger, Regensburg, 396-397. 
1839, II, 142-143. ce RD, Ue 13, 


™ Cf. the well-known Introduction to 
his Religions of Authority and the Re- 
ligion of the Spirit. 


96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


If so complete a submission was due to civil authority, what was 
due to the authority of the Church? 

In the second place, however, Bautain had now come to mistrust 
his own philosophy to some extent-—particularly the anti-intellect- 
ualistic aspect of it—and, conceiving that these propositions were 
directed against this aspect of his teaching, he was really willing to 
make recantation. He had been upheld in his attitude of rebellion 
against Episcopal authority by the belief that the Bishop’s views 
were heretical, and his own views had the weight of the Church’s 
authority on their side; but now that the Church had failed to 
sustain him, he was willing to go more than half-way in atoning 
for his error. In later years, he never lost an opportunity of 
acknowledging his mistake. Once, in the midst of an oration in 
Ste.-Geneviéve before a brilliant Parisian audience, he went out 
of his way to allude to his former errors: 


In order to give a wider range to the Word of God, I was led to 
weaken the validity of the human reason; and, to make an end of 
rationalism at a stroke, I menaced the very life of the reason, like those 
imprudent physicians who risk killing the patient by attacking the disease 
too violently. Yes, if I sinned then, I sinned through excess of faith; 
but the Church, always wise, because she is assisted by the divine Spirit, 
approves no excess, not even those which appear to be profitable to her.”° 


Finally, it can hardly be denied that Bautain signed the formula 
with some mental reservations—a procedure not confined to Catho- 
lic circles. He felt—and not without reason—that the controversy 
had largely been based upon a misunderstanding of his real position; 
and so, in disavowing certain somewhat unfortunate expressions, 
he was not really disavowing his main contention. He cherished 
for many years, as his manuscript notes show, the hope of writing 
a Critique of the Reason which should supersede Kant’s. In it he 
hoped to set forth all his essential ideas concerning faith and 
reason, while keeping within the bounds of the propositions he had 
signed. A Scholastic, used to making fine distinctions, might have 
succeeded in this; but Bautain was trained to the flowing, oratorical 
style of the Eclectics, and could not think in cramped quarters. 
‘Years afterwards, however, he wrote a letter hailing with pleasure 


™ De Régny, 381. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL oF 


the attempt of Professors Ubaghs and Laforét of Louvain to state 
a position similar to his own. He thanks them for calling attention 
to the real issue, which, he insists, is not the logical question of the 
“scope and range of the natural reason,” but the psychological 
question of the “primitive development of reason and of the ac- 
quisition of knowledge.” Logically, no doubt, reason is prior to 
faith; but psychologically, he insists, reason is posterior in order 
of genesis, both in the individual and in the race. He regrets that 
he never could get his adversaries to discuss that issue: 


They always spoke of the wwaided reason (Ja raison seule) reduced to 
its unaided natural powers; and they understood by that a completely 
developed reason, in full possession of itself, aided by all the means of 
human science, civilization, and tradition. I then asked, but in vain, 
what you have asked with better results: How did the natural reason 
develop? And, if it is certain that it has not within itself the initiative 
to function, and needed an external fillip to start the primitive motion 
of its faculties and the formation of knowledge, can it be said that it 
ever was unaided, and that by itself, unaided, it has produced all its 
products? . .. That is the truly philosophical question which out-tops 
the former question, and which alone is capable, . . . if properly solved, 
of completely undermining Rationalism’s doctrine of the absolute and 
entirely independent: spontaneity of the human mind."° 


‘This was Bautain’s last contribution to the controversy over reason 
and faith. “The views of Ubaghs and Laforét were tolerated for 
a while; but at length they, too, had to recant. Fideism became a 
heresy, and Bautain was designated as its chief protagonist. 

The rest of Bautain’s life is a story of constant frustration and 
gathering obscurity. Mlle. Humann, his good angel, had died 
during the heat of the controversy; and, after her death, it became 
increasingly difficult to hold the band together. Bautain, it must 
be admitted, was too imperious and autocratic to make an ideal 
leader of men. Once the truth of his philosophy had been thrown 
in doubt by the Church, his followers began to chafe under his 
rule; and it was only the explicit vow of obedience in the “Family 
Pact” which kept some of them loyal to him. In 1841, they all 
left Strasbourg, having bought the College of Juilly, near Paris, 


where they hoped to carry on their educational projects on a larger 


* Letter to Ubaghs, quoted by de Régny, 420-421. 


98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


scale. For a time, Bautain’s hopes ran high; but the enterprise 
eventually failed on account of the defection, one after another, 
of most of the band. Gratry, who had never signed the “Family 
Pact,” did not emigrate to Juilly in the first place. He became 
famous as a philosopher, but took care not to emphasize the fact 
that his philosophy was largely borrowed from Bautain. Ratis- 
bonne became the founder of the “Priests of Our Lady of Zion,” 
a now famous order for the conversion of the Jews. He found 
it convenient to forget, so far as possible, that he had ever been 
associated with Bautain, and looked upon the whole period of his 
discipleship to the now discredited philosopher as a blot on his 
career. He even tried to dissuade de Régny from writing the life 
of Bautain, intimating that he had made an ass of himself and 
had better be consigned to oblivion.’ Bonnechose, deputed to 
carry on a special mission at St.-Louis-des-Francais in Rome, was 
gradually drawn away from the band, and forged a career of his 
own. He, too, became alienated from Bautain, who found it 
difficult to forgive his defection. When he became Cardinal, 
Bautain wrote him a reproachful letter, ironically congratulating 
him on having at last reached the top of that hill which they used 
to climb together daily, to plead their case at Rome, saying “Ascend- 
amus iterum.?'*  Bautain himself always remained at the foot of 
the hill, rejecting all ecclesiastical preferments. 

It is not unlikely that external influences had a share in breaking 
up the band. Father Rozaven, writing to Mgr. de Trévern from 
Rome shortly before Bautain and Bonnechose left for Strasbourg, 
assured him that the kind reception accorded to the two pilgrims 
did not imply approval of their opinions, or of their ambition to 
found an order. He urges the Bishop, “above all,” to see that 
they do not succeed in forming the “society” they propose, or 
rather in maintaining what already exists. He has heard, he says, 
“that when they have won an adherent they take great care to 
isolate him from the company of those who do not share their 
sentiments. Presumption,” he adds, “has been in all times the 


great rock on which neophytes strike; ... having enjoyed some 

™ See his letter to de Régny in Pére Paris, 1897. It is a very scurrilous 
Ingold’s collection of unedited letters, letter, and reflects no credit on its writer. 
L’Abbé Bautain et ses disciples, reprinted This letter is also in Pére Ingold’s 


from Miscellanea Alsatica, Colmar and _ collection. 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 99 


consideration before their conversion, they easily persuade them- 
selves that they should be listened to like oracles.””® Was Father 
Rozaven speaking semi-officially, or merely voicing the views of 
the faction at Rome that was opposed to Bautain? It is not for 
us to thread the intricacies of ecclesiastical politics, but it is not 
improbable that Bautain’s failure in his life-work was at least partly 
due to Rome’s proverbial suspicion of ‘‘neophytes.”°° Newman 
and Tyrrell encountered similar obstacles. Whatever the cause, 
the fact is that Bautain died a disappointed man. 

Perhaps the cruellest disappointment which fell to his lot was 
the collapse of public interest in his philosophy. In 1834, when 
it was rumored that he was about to begin to publish his system, 
all France was a-tiptoe with excitement; but when, in 1839, the 
first volumes appeared, containing a general introduction to 
philosophy and a lengthy treatise on Experimental Psychology,” 
they got a very luke-warm reception; and his Moral Philosophy,*’ 
which appeared in 1842, was hardly noticed at all. When the 
taint of heresy becomes fastened to the name of a Catholic phil- 
osopher, cen est fait de lui! ‘The Abbé became conscious that 
he and his philosophy already belonged to the past. He never 
published any more of his system. 

After one has learned to love the fire, dash, and enthusiasm of 
Bautain’s earlier writings, his later philosophical works make rather 
melancholy reading. From 1853-1863, he lectured on Moral 
Theology at»the Sorbonne, and all his lectures eventually found 
their way into print; but there is little of great significance in any 
of these volumes.** ‘They are nothing but Bautain’s earlier ethical 
works, revised in a spirit of sober conservatism, all originality of 
thought and expression being carefully eliminated in the interest 


™ Lettres Inédites du P. Rozaven, S.J., with new title, L’Esprit humain et ses 
sur les erreurs de M. Bautain. Publiés  facultés. 


par A. M. P. Ingold, Paris, 1902. ®2 Philosophie morale, Paris, 1842. 
© A suspicion in no wise unjustified, if (Abbrev.: Phil. Mor.) 
the prevention of change be the main Ta Morale de PEvangile comparée 


object. Consider the changes introduced aux divers systémes de Morale, Paris, 

into Christian theology by converted 1855; Philosophie des lois, Paris, 1860; 

philosophers like Justin Martyr, August- La conscience, Paris, 1861; Manuel de 

ine, and some of the Alexandrian fathers!  philosophie morale, Paris, 1866. The 
"= Philosophie. Psychologie Expérimen-  first-named volume is by far the best. 

tale, Strasbourg, Paris, 1839. (Abbrev.: (Abbrev.: Mor. Ev. D.). 

Psych. Exp.) New edition, Paris, 1859, 


100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


of orthodoxy. Result: a series of quite harmless but relatively 
uninteresting volumes. “The same might be said of the only work 
which he published during this period on his favorite topic of 
epistemology: the conférences philosophiques read before the Cercle 
Catholique in 1842-43,** and later published in résumé. In these 
conférences he maintains a doctrine of the limitations of the reason 
very similar to his earlier doctrine; but he leans so hard at every 
step upon St. Thomas (or at least the neo-Platonic element in St. 
Thomas) that the argument limps badly, and has almost the air 
of acommentary. ““What a pity,” one is tempted to exclaim, “that 
so keen an intellect should be thus shackled and crippled!” 

It would be a mistake, however, to think of Bautain as a 
prisoner chafing in captivity. For him, true liberty was to be 
found only in loyal obedience to authority; and the yoke of in- 
tellectual bondage never galled his shoulders, for he was convinced 
that the pathway to truth leads through the gateway of humility. 
This attitude came out most impressively in his Notre-Dame con- 
férences on Religion and Liberty,*’ delivered in 1848, and inter- 
rupted by the outbreak of the Revolution. It was just at this 
time that Pius LX, the “liberal Pope”—not yet disillusioned and 
embittered—was inspiring many to hope for the reconciliation of 
Catholicism and democracy. Bautain, in these addresses, acts as 
the spokesman for the Catholic Liberals of France. He maintains 
that the Church, far from being the enemy of liberty, is the seed- 
plot wherein all the liberties, civil and political, have grown up; 
he eulogizes O’Connell as the living exemplar of the union of 
religion and liberty; he insists that the best way to promote liberty 
is to get men to submit to the authority of the Church, since it is 
submission to the Church’s authority which produces virtue, and 
the greatest degree of liberty is possible only when men are virtu- 
ous. ‘This volume is a real contribution to our understanding of 
Bautain’s philosophy, since it applies his central principle, life as 
conditional spontaneity, to the field of politics, where we are all 
at home, and so makes the meaning of that principle transparently 
clear. 


*4 Abbrev.: Cerc. Cath. 2nd ed. with supplementary essay, Paris, 
De la religion et de la liberté con- 1865. 
siderées dans leur rapports, Paris, 1848; 


THE ODYSSEY OF AN ARDENT SOUL 101 


We have said that Bautain died a disappointed man. All his 
most cherished plans miscarried; all his most cherished ideas failed 
to meet with approval. We must not suppose, however, that he 
died an unhappy man. If he failed as a philosophical reformer, 
he succeeded as a preacher and spiritual advisor, particularly with 
the educated classes. As he advanced in years, he devoted himself 
more and more to quiet study and meditation, and found great 
satisfaction in contemplating the mysteries of the faith. Books 
of sermons, meditations, letters of advice to people in various 
stations of life, came from his pen in considerable number, and 
won popularity. His book on The Art of Public Speaking had a 
prodigious success.°° Most important of all, he cultivated a spirit 
of Christian resignation, and learned to look upon success and 
failure with equanimity. Only a few weeks before his death in 
1867, he completed a beautiful little book which may be considered 
his philosophical will and testament: Choses d’autre monde: 
journal dun philosophe, recueilli et publié par PAbbé Bautain.™ 
Here the whole gamut of Christian ideas is once more reviewed, 
as in the Philosophie du Christianisme; but all the extreme views 
which gave rise to controversy are now mellowed and softened. 
From a literary point of view, the book is his masterpiece; the 
story of the conversion of the fictitious philosopher, depicted in 
his diary, holds one’s interest from start to finish; and if not 
philosophically, is at least psychologically convincing. An atmos- 
phere of calm certitude and perfect trust pervades its pages, showing 
that, in spite of a stormy passage, Bautain had reached his soul’s 
haven, and had found in the Catholic faith those ultimates and 
absolutes for which, from his youth, he had had so unquenchable 
a thirst. 


® See de Régny’s bibliography for these by a member of the N. Y. bar. Repub- 
minor works. An Eng. trans. of the lished, Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 
Art de parler en public was published by 1873. 
Scribner, N. Y., 1859: The Art of Ex- * Published posthumously, Paris, Hach- 
tempore Speaking. ‘Hints for the pulpit,  ette, 1868. 
the senate, and the bar. With additions 


CHAPTER II 


BAUTAIN AS A PANVITALIST 


EGEL and Cousin both recognized in Bautain a capacity 
H for system-building which aroused their expectations. If, 
after his conversion to Catholicism, reverence for tradi- 
tion and authority tended to set limits to his speculative imagination, 


a remarkable unity nevertheless pervades his whole philosophy. It 
was his conscious aim to reduce all his teaching to a simple formula: 


All human knowledge [he. says] ought . .. to be capable of being 
reduced to a single idea, as the universe depends upon a single Being. 
. . . He only knows well, who sees what he knows as a unity and at a 
glance, who seizes all the parts in their general relations and all the 
relations in a single view. 


Each separate science should have its zdée-mére, its generating idea, 
according to Bautain, as each chapter and paragraph in a book 
should have its leading thought; and all these generating ideas 
must in their turn be brought into unity with one another, if the 
ideal of philosophy is to be reached. 

To a considerable extent Bautain achieved his ideal. 


M. Bautain seems to have persuaded himself [complained Father 
Rozaven]| that, in the idea of Christianity as he has formulated it for 
himself, the whole of theology was contained, and that, without studying 
details, he could deduce therefrom all the dogmas. He has not com- 
prehended that, in the exposition of these dogmas there are modes of 
expression adopted by the Church, from which it is not permissible to 
depart.” 


The same tendency here alluded to pervades all Bautain’s philoso- 
phy. Not Schelling himself is bolder than Bautain in his systematic 
development of an idea through analogy and deduction. It is 
possible to discover in his teaching not only certain fundamental 


* Psych. Exp., II, 153. * Lettres Inédites du P. Rozaven, S. J., 
3rd letter. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 103 


metaphysical ideas and ethical ideas, which permit one to sum up 
his, metaphysics and ethics in brief, but also certain ideas which 
run through his philosophy as a whole, and are applied simultane- 
ously, by a process of bold analogical reasoning, to metaphysics 
and philosophy, epistemology and politics, logic and pedagogy, 
ethics and mathematics. They are so fundamental that they per- 
vade all his critique of contemporary philosophy and his conception 
of the history of philosophy; so that an exposition of them is an 
essential prerequisite to the understanding of even his most occa- 
sional writings. Perhaps it was the failure to grasp these central 
concepts that led to his too hasty condemnation. He presented his 
conclusions to the public before explaining his premises; if he had 
followed the reverse order, the effect might have been different. 
We shall not imitate his unfortunate, butt-end-foremost order of 
exposition, but shall begin at once with his “generating ideas.” 

‘The most fundamental of all Bautain’s ideas is the idea of life 
as a conditionally spontaneous process of va-et-vient in which the 
reaction of the subject is dependent upon the action of the object, 
and in which the subject, stimulated by the object, develops by 
continuous intussusception and polarization. 

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that, while the central 
idea in Bautain’s system is a biological idea, his chief interest is 
not biological but moral and religious; that is to say, the moral 
and religious consequences which he appears to deduce from the 
biological formula for life really preceded that formula in the 
development of his philosophy, and helped determine its selection. 
He proved his corollaries by means of his theorem; but he was 
already passionately devoted to his corollaries before he found his 
theorem. We may say, then, that in a certain sense the funda- 
mental idea in his philosophy is not the idea of Life, but a moral 
and religious idea conceived as the result of a profound reaction 
against German Idealism in general and Fichte in particular. It 
will be remembered that Bautain’s nervous break-down, the first 
step in his conversion, took place in the midst of his course on 
Transcendental Ethics, in which he was developing a doctrine of 
liberty as the goal of moral effort, in obvious imitation of Fichte’s 
Sittenlehre. He was maintaining, as we have seen, the dignity of 
the human individual, whose will, identical with the divine Will, 


104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 
was its own law, whose reason could recognize ultimate truth 
because it had created it. If we grant, with Fichte himself, that 
a man tends to be an “idealist” or a “dogmatist,” and to emphasize 
the subjective or the objective element in experience, according as 
the feeling of self-dependence and activity or that of dependence 
and passivity has the upper hand, then we may say that Bautain’s 
nervous break-down, by casting him suddenly from a mood of 
Fichtean self-dependence into a mood of helplessness, in which 
he groped about pathetically for external aid and light from above, 
thereby pitched him from idealism into dogmatism, and made it 
necessary for him to find a new philosophical formula to contrast 
with the Fichtean formula, and fit his new condition.° 

Behind the Fichtean ethics and epistemology, and behind the 
whole philosophy of German Romanticism, there lurks that con- 
ception of an irresistible life-force, spontaneously gushing up both 
in Nature and in man, to which a modern Romanticist has given 
the name of the é/an vital. Its ethical corollary, the idea that 
within the Ego pulsate forces which cannot, ought not, be re- 
strained by any external barrier or external authority, and that the 
way of life is the way of free self-expression, is a theme that 
forever recurs in the literature of Romanticism, from Rousseau 
and Goethe to Stirner and Nietzsche. As a protest against the 
mechanical conception of Nature, the Romantic conception of 
Nature as animate and organic appealed strongly to Bautain; and 
to this extent he always remained a Romanticist; but the ethical 
consequences of the Romantic conception of the life-force (indi- 
vidualism and moral autonomy) were now revolting to him. And 
so it came to him as a veritable revelation when Mlle. Humann 
suggested to him* that if he were to study medicine he would 
discover that life is not “pure activity” at all, but a response to 


Cf. Ferraz, 319-320. “It was during 
his illness that he lost that confidence and 
pride of life which is the making of 
independent investigators and_ philoso- 
phers. He fell into that state of pros- 
tration and discouragement which the 


oneself a power and a point d’appui 
which one does not find within... . 
Faith took the place of reason with him; 
religion, of philosophy.” 

*The idea of “life? appears in the 
Cours de Métaphysique of 1822, written 


founder of the Society of Jesus demanded 
of those whom he wished to lead back 
to religion, and which implies, together 
with the consciousness of one’s own 
weakness, the need of finding outside of 


before Bautain had taken up medicine; 
also in the Variétés Philosophiques, 1823. 
I infer that he got it from Mlle. Hu- 
mann. His medical studies only ampli- 
fied and enriched the conception. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 105 


external stimuli; that consequently, the subject depends upon the 
object, and the creature upon the Creator—with the ethical corollary 
that humility and not pride, submissiveness and not independence, 
receptive faith and not rationalistic speculation, are appropriate for 
man in view of his very nature. With this clue in hand, and 
guided by the conviction that natural law is the same in the ethical 
and biological realms—that the conditions of life in the physical 
sense are also the conditions of life in the spiritual sense—Bautain 
applied himself ardently to the study of anatomy and physiology, 
and worked out as his doctor’s thesis, a series of Propositions 
générales sur la vie which became the basis of his whole philosophy. 
We shall examine this little book carefully, in view of its funda- 
mental importance. 

Bautain begins the main body of his thesis with some proposi- 
tions “‘on life in general.”’ Here we see at once the points of 
contact and contrast between his conception and that of the 
Romantic school: 


Life [he states] is the active and absolute principle of all that exists; 
and the principle is known only by its manifestation. Now the manifes- 
tation of life is movement, development, creation. It issued from a 
single foyer [center or focal point], from Being, the source of all life, 
who radiates it out of Himself.® It is determined, or posited, in forms, 
and the posited form is what we call existence. 


This does not sound very different from the Romantic concep- 
tion of a life-force, welling up in all creation. But Bautain 
immediately makes it plain that life, for him, does not well up 
from below of itself; it must be called forth by stimulation from 
above, as vegetation is called forth from the fecund earth by the 
fecundating rays of the sun. ‘The creation of individual entities, 
as he describes it, is not the result of the self-diversification of a 
single force, bursting up like molten lava and working against no 


* it is the result of a union of 


obstacle but its own solidification; 
two principles, one active and one passive—and the passive principle 


is the subjective one. 


*Pp. 7-10. the Bergsonian élan than the simile of 
®°The gender is of course (intention- the fountain impeded by its falling drops, 
ally) ambiguous in French. for no external force like gravitation 


This, I think, is a better simile for enters in to complicate the picture. 


106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


If we. examine the conditions of the generation of each indi- 
vidual existence, he says, we shall at once perceive that it is the 
result of the interaction of an “agent in full enjoyment of life” 
and a “‘form or capacity of life, a germ analogous to the agent in 
nature,” residing in “‘an already developed existence, a forme mére.” 
Generalizing, we may say that every existence is the product of 
a male, objective, or active principle, the universal /ife, and a 
female, subjective, or passive principle, the universal beimg or 
substance. 


These two principles are found in every living creature, though in 
diverse proportions. . . . In some, being embraces life, as if to retain 
it within; in others, life seems to triumph over being and dominate it. 
This is the basis of sex. ‘The two terms necessary for the production of 
a third, being types and organs of the two constitutive principles of al! 
existence, are to each other as the principles they represent. One is 
always relatively active, the other relatively passive. 


The passive agent bears “the base, the plasm (Plastique), and 
furnishes a “place” for the generative act; the active agent is 
“the organ of life and the.bearer of all its virtues.” 


At the instant when passive and active unite, the life-giving ray or 
the virtue of life reaches the foyer of the mother-form and triumphs 
over its concentration; the conception or intussusception of life takes 
places... 

Objective life is in all the universe the principe principiant, or, if you 
will, the original stimulus, and at the same time the aliment, of every 
subjective life; and life, one in its essence, gives or communicates itself: 
Materially, through the active or the father in the act of generation; 
physically, through physical light dispersed in the air, and through all 
the forms and all the agents of nature which serve as its vehicles: it is 
intellectually or mentally communicated through human speech, through 
the breath and the light of the intelligence, and it is psychically trans- 
mitted by the Word and the Spirit.8 


Thus, each individual entity, if we conceive it to be potentially 
present in the germ from which it is destined to spring, is absolutely 
dependent upon external aid for admission into the realm of exist- 
ence. As Bautain puts it elsewhere, 


* All quotations so far are from pp. 7-9. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 107 


each birth, each production, is the result of a struggle, a triumph, of 
light and life. . . . In all the realm of nature, life is at first enchained 
in matter, oppressed and as it were stifled by it. The spark does not 
fly from the pebble unless it is struck. . . .. The life of the vegetable is 
enclosed in the hard shell of the seed. . . . But if the envelope is not 
broken, the germ remains inert and the life captive. It is the same 
with animal life: it sleeps in its germ, in the womb of unfecundated 
matter; fecundation is a liberating act that breaks its chains, tears it out 
of its inertia, and drags it out of itself.® 


But though it belongs to the objective principle to take the initia- 
tive, life can neither begin nor be maintained unless the subjective 
principle reacts. “The germ must perform the vital act of “radia- 
tion, the issuing from itself to respond to the stimulating ray, to 
seize it and become identical with it.” Once this initial reaction 
has occurred, 


the va-et-vient of life, its movement in opposite directions within a 
single form, has begun and will continue through all the duration of 
that form—the objective life incessantly pouring or plunging itself into 
the subjective foyer, and the latter reacting to it. . . . It is upon the 
perfect harmony of this double movement in a single form that the 
duration of that form and the perfection of its life depend; and the 
preponderance of one or the other of the two principles in their simul- 


taneous act determines the periodic phases of this form in the duration of 
its existence.!® 


The process of life, says Bautain, is identical in all parts of the 
universe, in the world as a whole, in the organism as a whole, and 
in each separate organ; “it is the same in the atom and the organic 
molecule, the same in heaven and earth.”*? We shall see later 
how he attempts to apply the laws of life to inorganic nature. The 
bulk of this thesis, however, is occupied with the study of the life- 
process as it appears In man. 

Even here, “life” is a rather broad concept, for a human being 
is not a purely physiological entity. ‘The human personality is a 
living soul, manifesting itself through an intelligent mind and 
clothed with an organized body.” It includes ‘“‘(1) the human 
essence (étre); (2) the pure existence of the essence in its mental 


’ Psych. Exp., 1, 95-96. ™ Tbid. 
 Props., 10. 


108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


form; and (3) the organic envelope, which is at once the product 
and the container of the two antecedent terms.” This is not to 
say that man is composed of three independent elements; life in 
him is one: “It is the life of the soul which manifests itself 
through the mind and the intelligence, and it is again this life 
which expresses itself by way of the mind through the organic 
functions and free movements of the body.” The essence, exist- 
ence, and organism (soul, mind, body) of man are to each other 
“‘as center, radius, and sphere, or as point, line, and body. ‘To 
abstract . . . one or another of these terms is to cut up the idea 
of man, and not to see him in his unity and his integrity.” Hence, 
in analyzing the development of man’s physical life, we are simul- 
taneously studying the development of his mental and spiritual life: 
“In naming the existence, one implies the essence, since the essence 
is the absolute condition of the existence; in speaking of the solid, 
one implies the line and the point, since there is no solid without 
extremes and without line.” 

It must not be forgotten that life is, properly speaking, the 
attribute of the soul or essence of the man. It is this which 
constitutes the foyer or vital center in the egg out of which springs 
the initial reaction to the life-giving sperm. ‘““The corporeal form 
appears first to us who are located outside, and who see only the 
outside of the form;” it develops first, because corporeal stimuli 
come first. Later comes the awakening of the mind under the 
influence of mental stimulation in the shape of speech, and last of 
all the clear awakening of the soul under the influence of the 


Divine Word. 


It is always the same man, the same soul, the same being, only at 
such and such a stage in his development. . . . All the forms of our 
personality, and thus the organic form itself, are therefore the product 
of the foyer of the soul, influenced by life under one or another form; 
and Stahl was right in saying that it is the soul which made, and at 
each instant makes, its body.?” 


The unity of the laws of life appears as we consider the progres- 
sive stages in the history of a human life: generation, the develop- 
ment of the embryo, the growth of the body and the development 


Props, 11-12. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 109 


of self-consciousness in childhood, the ripening of physical, mental, 
and spiritual development in the prime of life, and finally death 
itself, in which the laws of life find perhaps their clearest ex- 
emplification. 


(1). Generation. Receptivity the fundamental law of life. 

“Man exists potentially in his father and his mother before 
being conceived and engendered as a personal existence.” Bautain 
is not a Platonist at this point; each process of generation results 
in a new existence, a new individual, “destined to enjoy for himself 
the general heritage of life.” 

Father and mother are the immediate agents in the creative 
process, but the ultimate cause of each man’s existence is the inter- 
action of the two universal principles, objective Life and subjective 


Being: 


Whence comes the being or the base of the new human individual? 
From the mother. And the mother—whence did she receive it? One 
must necessarily ascend to a first source of all being, to a Being of Beings, 
to Him Who Is. Whence comes the life, the vital spirit, which animates 
the germ? ... From the father. But the father—whence did he re- 
ceive life? One must necessarily ascend from generation to generation, 
to a primal source of life, a primordial life, to Him who is Life itself 
and Truth. The mother no more creates the being of the child than 
the father creates its life; they both communicate what they have re- 
ceived, they posit externally what they bore within them. Generation 
is but transmission, and that is why the parents are but the depositaries 
and not the proprietors of their children.?* 


In this, the first stage of the life-process, there appears a funda- 
mental law which holds equally true of all the later stages: the 
law that life can neither begin nor continue without receptivity; 
that self-sufficiency and the pretention to autonomy mean sterility 


and death. 


By the act of fecundation, the life, of which the sperm is the vehicle, 
penetrates the maternal fluid, and impregnating with its virtue the germ 
dissolved in the fluid, it works a separation between what receives the 
fecundation, becomes alive, and is destined to pass into the light, and 
that which does not receive it and thus remains in inertia and in darkness. 


8 Tbid., 13. 


110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The plastic or alkaline fluid thus impregnated becomes mother-water, and 
this water holds in solution, mutually embraced, being and life, plasm 
and spirit, germ and sperm, or again alkali and acid.*4 


The ethical and theological analogies which Bautain here has in 
-mind should be sufficiently plain to the reader. If man is to obey 
the laws of life, his attitude must be one of humility and faith, 
not pride and skepticism. What may not be so evident is the fact 
that, in the last sentence quoted, a thorough-going Panpsychism is 
implied. ‘The position is taken that the laws of the organic world 
govern the inorganic world as well, without serious alteration: the 
reaction of an alkali to an acid is identical with that of a living 
germ to a living sperm. We shall return later to this important 
point. 


(2). Development of the embryo. Materialization of the vital 
principle by a process of polarization. Sex. 

The human embryo, according to Bautain, originates in what 
he calls (by analogy with the process of crystallization) a “saline 
point” in the fecundated bubble of mother-water. ‘This original 
saline point is ‘fone, simple, indestructible, without dimensions” like 
the mathematical point.*” It becomes visible through a process of 
precipitation: a part of the mother-water being drawn to the 
circumference of the egg and evaporated, the remainder becomes 
super-saturated, and precipitates itself at the saline point. ‘hen, 
under the influence of “‘the objective life which penetrates it 
through the maternal form,” the saline point becomes a “Salient 
point” (punctum saliens), and “spurts up” toward the objective life- 
force which stimulates it, while at the same time “the center of 
the mother-form attracts to itself the vital spirit by a reaction 
equal to the action of the superior life which draws it on high.””® 

Here appears for the first time the great law of polarization. 
Every living thing has its center of indifference, and its axis with 
two poles, one directed toward the stimulating life-force, the other 
toward the mother-form. In the seedling, they appear as seed, 
plantule, and radicule; in the human embryo, as heart, head, and 
abdomen, connected by an invisible axis whose visible “image” is 


 Props., 17. 6 Thid., 20. 
8 7:4, 18-19. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 111 


the backbone. ‘This axis, says Bautain, is the first realization of 
the living center, the first expression of its potentiality; and it is 
around that axis that all the organs are to be grouped. Through 
it the wital process will set in, in the organism.*’ Next, the process 
of polarization begins in a direction at right angles to the original 
axis; the direction of the diameter is marked out. Intersecting, 
the axis and diameter give the four right angles or the cross, the 
necessary foundation of every existence. 


Life in all realms [concludes Bautain] is organized by the universal 
law of polarization. An existence, whatever it may be, always issues 
originally from a center or foyer, which bears within it the potentiality 
of its development. When this center is fecundated or stimulated to 
issue from itself, it radiates and tends to posit externally the sphere of 
its vitality or its living form.?® 


Bautain seems to have watched the initial stages of embryonic 
development with the most intense interest; for there, before his 
eyes, the invisible vital principle was beginning to spin itself a body 
as a spider spins its web: 


First a reddish point appears in the center of the embryo, and from 
that point emanate rays, reddish also, in all directions; the beatings and 
pulsations which can already be noticed leave no doubt but that the 
central point is the heart, and its rays the blood-vessels. At about the 
end of the first month, the head outlines itself, very large at first in 
comparison with the rest of the body, and in the head appear two black 
points which are the eyes.’® 


The vital impulse thus gradually materializes itself, taking on first 
a liquid, then a solid form. ‘The blood is the primal source of the 
whole organism; it “contains within it,” says Bautain, “the plasm 
of the future organs, and, through it, this plasm is to be determined 
and organized.*° The blood-vessels develop out of the blood by 
“coagulation.” ‘They represent “the first paths which the subjective 
life traced for itself, and which, materialized by the plastic capacity, 
have become arteries and veins.”** The nerves later develop out 
of the nervous fluid by a similar process of “‘congelation.” As 
™ bid., 17. ” Props., 35. 


* Psych. Exp., 1, 303. Sader Rye 
® Thid. 


112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


for the chief organs of the body, they develop out of the blood by 
a regular application of the law of polarization. The heart is 
the foyer of the whole organism. Its upper, active, or “north” 
pole is the brain, which is the product of the most volatile part of 
the blood, “the animal spirit itself coagulated and fixed.” (Its 
“south” pole is found in the abdomen.) ‘The brain, once posited, 
begins to polarize itself in its turn: its foyer is the medulla ob- 
longata; its north pole appears in the organs of sight; its south 
pole, or root, is the spinal cord, from which the rootlets of the 
nervous system spring forth; its diameters, finally, are the ears. 

The order of embryonic development is of the utmost signifi- 
cance to Bautain. “That which appears later, he feels, must always 
be considered the tool or instrument of that which has already 
appeared; and, in general, a pole is always the servant of its foyer, 
while the north pole of the axis stands higher in “hierarchical 
dignity” than the south pole, and the poles of the diameter, though 
equal to each other, are more “passive” than either of the poles of 
the axis. According to this principle, not only is the body as a 
whole the instrument of the vital principle, but the parts of the 
body (together with the corresponding faculties of the soul) stand 
in an instrumental relation one to another. The heart and the 
circulatory system appear first of all; the brain and the nervous 
system appear to develop from the heart by a process of polarization. 
This means that the brain is an instrument or weapon thrown out, 
as it were, by the heart and the vital principle in their effort to 
express themselves and find their way in a material environment. 
The epistemological corollary is obvious: intellection, which corre- 
sponds to the brain and nervous system, is less fundamental than 
volition and emotion, which correspond to the heart and circulatory 
system; therefore the will gets us in touch with reality in a more 
fundamental way than does its tool, the intellect. Truly, Pascal 
was right in asserting that “the heart has reasons that the reason 
knows not of”! According to the same principle, the senses are 
to be regarded as the mere tools of the brain and the intellect, 
thrown out in the effort to know; and those senses which develop 
earliest (the sense of sight, for instance) have a greater hierarchical 
dignity than those which develop later. 

All this—substituting ontogenesis for phylogenesis—sounds sur- 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 113 


prisingly like Bergson. In Bautain, as in Bergson, we have a 
“descent of spirit into matter,” a self-materialization of spirit. 
Bergson might well borrow Bautain’s phraseology, and speak of 
matter as “coagulated” spirit; Bautain would have been grateful 
for Bergson’s word “canalization” to describe the process by which 
the élan vital carves its way through its own coagulated mass, and 
so makes itself blood vessels, nerves, etc. The eye evolves as 
a result of the impulse to see; the brain evolves as a tool of the 
life-principle, and a tool of secondary importance, at that: so both 
Bergson and Bautain would say. There is an important difference, 
however, as we have already pointed out: for Bergson and the 
Romanticists in general, life evolves spontaneously and “from be- 
low,” while for Bautain its spontaneity is only potential, and is 
conditioned strictly by external stimuli which, as it were, draw it 
out from above. For Bergson, life gushes up like a natural geyser, 
unsolicited. For Bautain, it “spurts up,” like a rocket, in quite 
a Bergsonian fashion; but the touching-off of the rocket is an ab- 
solutely essential part of the picture. 

In the case of embryonic development, this external solicitation 
is far from evident. It looks as though the process were proceed- 
ing under its own steam, without any aid from an external life- 
force. ‘This is an illusion, however, according to Bautain; the 
stimulus of the “objective life” is as essential to the development 
of the embryo as is the stimulus of sunlight to the development of 
the seed before it bursts through the soil; but in both cases the 
stimulus is transmitted—in the case of the embryo, through the 
mother, who “attenuates the objective action, too strong for the 
frail constitution of her fruit.” It is also through her, he adds, 
that the embryo “reacts toward the objective life.” 

Already in the embryonic stage the first “‘specific determination” 
of the coming individuality has become evident: sex. “Sex,” says 
Bautain, “is the expression of a disproportion between the form™ 
and the life in the same individual.”’* Femininity is form that 
is alive, but not saturated with life, and hence craves saturation. 
Masculinity is superabundance of life, in too restricted a form, 


 Props., 26-27. * Props., 23. 
* Form vs. life — being vs. life. 


114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


and hence seeks to communicate itself. Woman is -++soul,—mind, 


+body; man is —soul,-+-mind,—body. 


Man is in general more active than passive; he feels less keenly, less 
deeply, less centrally than woman. His will is much more apt to posit 
itself externally with a view to dominate, than to retire within itself 
(se recueillir) in order to enjoy; he is in all his personality more ex- 
pressive than impressionable.”° 


The significance of sex for Bautain is very profound; with 
Plato”® and Freud, he is willing to say that sex-need is 


the source of all human activity, whatever its object or its form may be, 
whether the man or woman, according to the degree of his development 
feels more particularly what he lacks in the soul, in the mind, or in the 


body, and whether he seeks it in a psychical, intellectual, or physical 
manner.”" 


Feeling the need of what he lacks before he is able to know it, the 
individual bestirs himself to find it. “Hence the uneasiness which 
troubles the human being from his mother’s womb, which leads 
him to detach himself from her, and seek outside that which will 
complete and harmonize him in his nature.** The ultimate mean- 
ing of sex-need is spiritual, since the sexes only imperfectly sym- 
bolize the two universal principles of Being and Life: 


It is for humanity in its present state the need of the objective uni- 
versal Life. It is, in the soul, soul-hunger, desire for life. It is, in 
the mind, mental thirst, need of light, knowledge, the word, instruction.” 


Bautain does not specifically call the principles of Life and Being 
the Male and Female principles of the universe; but some of his 
disciples did not hesitate to do so. In a manuscript of the Abbé 
Carl which I found” at Juilly, there occurs in the midst of endless 
Cabalistic and Neo-Pythagorean computations the following curious 
bit of speculation: | 


*® Props., 25. *® Ibid., 24-25. 

*®He refers specifically (p. 25) to With the aid of M. VPAbbé Laber- 
Aristophanes’? speech in the Symposium. thonniére and M. le supérieur Sabatier, 

* Props., 25. whom I have to thank for a very pleas- 


* Ibid., 24. ant day spent at the old school. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 0 6 


Mary is the first passive, the passive par excellence, the universal 
passive. 

From this point of view she is the relative 1, as God the Father is the 
absolute 1 in the active order. : 

This relative 1 gives birth to God the Word (le Verbe-Dieu) as the 
absolute 1 engenders God the Word. 

It is 2 under this aspect, and from its union with the fruit of its 
womb issue all the gifts which the Holy Spirit pours out upon the 
creatures. Ihe Word is its source; Mary is its dispenser. 

Mary thus has for her number 1-+-2--3=6; and by the very fact that 
Mary is the refiection of the Most Holy Trinity, she is the ideal of the 
whole creation, and every regular ternary reproduces the 6 which gives 
it birth. 

3x4: the creation in its relation to deity=12.—6x4: the creation in 
its relation to Mary=24. ‘Two apocalyptic numbers. 


I would not have the reader take this as a typical excerpt from 
the writings of the “Strasbourg school.” ‘The Abbé Carl was a 
gentle and lovable soul, not notable for intellectual vigor. Still, 
he reflects tendencies which can be found in Bautain—Pythagorean 
tendencies, and above all the tendency to universalize the sex- 
principle. For this latter tendency he was much cniticized; in 
fact, he was accused of downright indecency. ‘What, after all,” 
cries Bautain’s Mennaisian opponent, “‘is a philosophy where it is 
continually a question of gestation, embryo, and accouchement, and 
where nothing can be accomplished without the aid of the mid- 
wife!”**  Bautain answered to one of these critics, reasonably 
enough, that young men are bound to learn the facts of sex in one 
way or another, and had best do so in a serious and scientific atmos- 
phere: “Is it not better to explain all that to them scientifically, 
and . . . obtain a double advantage: on the one hand, enlighten 
their intelligence by deepening their knowledge of the facts of 
nature, and on the other hand, associate the memory of these things 
in their minds with serious thoughts, having something solemn 
about them?”*? Bautain was nothing if he was not a profound 
psychologist and a skillful educator. 


(3). Childhood. The chief organic functions in their rela- 


tion to the organism and to the life-process in general. 


"De Venseignement philosophique de * Letter to the Abbé Mougenot, FB,K, 
M. VAbbé Bautain, 644. (Ens. Phil. B.) Cahier I, 11-12. 


116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The child is primarily a little animal; so the study of his de- 
velopment is, in the main, simply the study of the development of 
the main organic functions. In this chapter, accordingly, we find 
the clearest biological formulae for the life-process in general: 


Life is one in the universe; it is the objective, universal Life; it is 
one in each creature, one in its activity, which is a simultaneous exit and 
entrance; and all the vital functions are but drisements, refracted rays of 
this activity. Man lives only by intus-susception of the life which sur- 
rounds and penetrates him, and by ex-position, emission or radiation of 
the life he receives and has received. In other terms, man lives, in his 
soul, in his mind and in his body by subjectivating the objective and by 
objectivating the subjective.** 

The vital act or process has its explanation in the identification of the 
two principles which constitute the individuality, the indivisible duality, 
of each existence. . . . This double tendency realizes itself in two 
movements in inverse direction which occur simultaneously. ... To 
live is, for the creature, to be stimulated by life; it is to receive it, . . 
react simultaneously toward it; then emit it, transmit it to other forms, 
exchange it continually for new inspirations and communications of life.** 


The only difference between the process as it appears in the 
embryo and in the child is that the stimulating and self-imparting 
activity of the universal Life reaches the child directly in air, light, 
and food, and no longer by the mediation of the mother. In- 
tellectually and spiritually, however, he still needs mediators. 

All the organic functions reveal the same life-process. Nutrition 
is first stimulation, then assimilation; then appears “the need of 
opposing functions and movements by which the organism or a 
given organ tends to discharge itself, project outwardly from itself 
either the superabundance of what has been introduced into it, or 
the dross of the assimilative process.”*’ Reproduction begins with 
the discharge of the surplus life of the male and its reception by 
the female; “and later must she not reject and expel that which 
she has received and absorbed?”**® Finally, the general function 
of relation (rapport), which includes all the various reactions of 
the organism to the environment, is obviously a process of va-et-vient 
between us and the beings which surround us. It is first “‘a rela- 
tion of those beings to us, whereby they act upon us”; then “‘we 


 Props., 32-33. * Tbid., 32. © Ibid. * Thid. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST LilZ 


receive in our sensitive center their impressions and assimilate them 
by our sensations, our conceptions”; finally it appears as “our rela- 
tion to the external beings, whereby we react towards them, and 
dominate them in our turn by the power of our will, our mind, our 
senses, and our organs,””*’ 

The same process appears in each organ, and the organism as 
a whole. It appears in “the systole and diastole of the heart,” in 
“nervous eradiation and inradiation,” in the “‘secretion and excre- 
tion of the glands,” in the “extension and contraction of the 
muscles.” Everything, “even to the expansion and concentration 
of the least organic molecule,” reveals “this double movement by 
which life is simultaneously received and restored.”** The intel- 
lectual and moral life proceeds on this plan. The whole organism 


in short 


is a single system, existing in its form by virtue of a single center, for 
a single end, and in which each part is in the service of the whole, the 
whole for the well-being of each part, and parts and whole together for 
the life. Each organ is hence a functionary, either principal or sub- 
ordinate, of the life, and the principal of these functionaries of the vital 
activity are, in the child, the heart with the lungs, the brain with the 
organs of the senses, and the stomach.” 


The rest of the chapter is devoted to the description of the 
evolution of these specific functionaries and the determination of 
their rank in the organism. It may be summed up by saying that 
Bautain reproduces the Platonic tripartite psychology, reversing the 
rank of the brain and the heart, which correspond to the reason 
and “the spirited part.” 


(4). Prime of life. Intellectual and spiritual development, 
and spiritual health. Physical, intellectual, and spiritual repro- 
duction. 

As the foetus is carried within the mother, so the embryonic 
mind of the child is carried within the body, which is its “‘con- 
tainer,” its “living but dark prison,”*® through which it is impressed 
and expresses itself, as the foetus does through the mother. The 


7 hid. ® Thid., 34. 
8 Thid., 32-33. “ Ibid., 47. 


118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


mind is conceived within the womb of the body when language, 
the vehicle of thought, carries the thought of some other human 
being to the “form of the understanding” in the child.” 


The spiritual germ of this new conception is incorporated in the brain 
of the child, . . . and the life, the generating ray which must fecundate 
the germ, will come to him through a human agent, speaking the Verbum, 
the word of the intelligence. . . . As soon as the child has conceived 
the sense of the verb, that of the substantive verb To Be, the mental 
personality of the child is settled in his corporeal form; mental concep- 
tion is accomplished.*” 


We have here an almost magical conception of the function of 
language, and of the verb fo de in particular, which nevertheless 
is simply a way of emphasizing the fact that mind and self-con- 
sciousness develop only in society and by social intercourse. Once 
conceived, says Bautain, mental man needs the word to sustain his 
mental existence as much as physical man needs bread. The com- 
plete acquisition of language leads to the positing of the self. The 
child “will enter by speech and by intelligence into commerce . . . 
with other intelligent and speaking beings, and thus learn not only 
to distinguish his Ego from the non-Egos which surround him, but 
also to know this Ego, and know himself in his speech.’’** 

But still a third conception and gestation are necessary ere the 
whole man is born: 


Man who is soul, mind, and body, does not exist merely to live in 
his body and for his body, nor in his body and his mind for himself and 
his fellows. He must also live in his soul for the sake of the Being 
who is the first source of life and of all life, and to whom finally all 
life must be given back. .. . The germ is provided by the soul itself, 
by the radical base of every man, already alive in his body and his mind. 
The pure life which is destined to penetrate this germ and fecundate it, 
will either come from the life-giving Spirit itself which “bloweth where 
it listeth” . . . or by the word of life announced to man by the minis- 
try of one of his fellows, who himself received the word from the 
Spirit and lives by Its life.** 


Such a minister of the word is rightly called “Father”; without his 


* Props., 35. 8 Thid., 48. 
“ Ibid., 47. “ Tbid., 49-50. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST Lip 


fecundating word, the capacity for spiritual development may re- 
main sterile, “as the egg would never have developed apart from 
fecundation, nor the mind apart from speech.”** 

Relationship with the Universal Life having once been estab- 
lished, it must become a constant commerce if spiritual health is 
to be maintained. As the health of the foetus depends upon its 
union with the mother, as that of the mind depends upon constant 
communication with other minds, so the soul’s health depends upon 
the maintenance of a right relationship with the Source of its life. 


And [he adds], if it is she, the soul, who makes her mind and her body, 
if she makes and remakes them at every instant, and always as a function 
of (en raison de) that which stimulates or acts upon her, shall she not 
communicate to the mind and to the body what she is, her well-being 
or her ill-being? And, if she can be touched, stimulated by pure Life, 
be fecundated by It and react toward It, shall she not communicate the 
virtue of that Life to her mind and to her body? *® 


Bautain, it will be noted, is a firm believer in mental healing. As 
he says later, “It is above all the mental and moral factor which 
makes for what doctors call resiliency (le ressort) and which they 
so like to find in patients.”*’ On the other hand, the “snalade 
imaginaire” proves that the influence of mind over body may be 
harmful as well as helpful. The spiritual man, however, is kept 
in health “by the very fact that he lives in the bottom of his being 
and in the whole of his being, that he is in triple relationship with 
objective Life and draws his life from the purest source.’’** 

Bautain’s doctrine of the three conceptions culminates in a 
parallel between the men of the spirit, the men of the mind, and 
the men of the body: 


‘These [he cries] are the men who, arrived at the autumn of their earthly 
life, present in their person and their physiognomy that dignity, that 
beauty of ripeness and old age which inspires at once trust and respect, 
love and veneration. "The man who has lived more by his mind and 
reason than by his soul, when he becomes old and infirm is irritable, 
uneasy, impatient, regretting and praising the days that are gone, dis- 
contented with what surrounds him; he inspires fear or compassion, 


* Thid., 50. “ Thid., 58. 
“ Thid., 49. * Thid., 59-60. 


120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


rather than respect or love. The animal man, old and broken, is a 
collapsed machine, out of gear, who lies in a corner, moans, and is 
dumb. He inspires pity and disgust.*® 


But before passing to the subject of old age and death, Bautain 
devotes a few pages to the phenomenon of reproduction, charac- 
teristic of the prime of life. In childhood, he says, sex-need shows 
itself in “the tendency of each human individuality to seek and 
grasp what it lacks.””® But at adolescence man becomes specifically 
conscious of what he lacks. His life is then superabundant at 
both poles, brain and abdomen. Reproduction seems like a purely 
physical process, but it should be remarked that the seminal fluid 
has, besides its primary function, the secondary function “to flow 
back also into the interior, pour itself into the blood, impregnating 
it with its own virtues,” and so to produce various secondary modi- 
fications, not least of which is the stimulation of intellectual creativ- 
ity, or intellectual reproduction. “This work of intellectual con- 
ception, parturition, and reproduction, is an excellent derivative 
which, attracting life to the superior pole, and consuming it in 
ideal products, enfeebles the animal tendency.”** Intense physical 
activity is another means of sex sublimation; but religion is best, 
for it develops the will, and “leads it to exercise its legitimate 
superiority over the imagination and the senses, while at the same 
time it gives man’s desire an ascending direction, and sets before 
his affection a superior object.”’* Bautain is not over-ascetic; he 
sets a very high estimate on marriage, when both parties are spiritual. 
It is from these “‘free and chosen unions,” he says, “between two 
human creatures animated in all their nature, each alive in all the 
elements of his existence, that the noblest offspring comes”’*—for 
he is inclined to believe that in the union of egg and sperm the 
whole nature of each parent, moral and mental as well as physical, 
fuses with that of the other. 


(5). Decay and death. 


What is death? [asks Bautain]. It is in general the breaking of the 
relation between a subjective and particular center and form, and an 


” Props., 60. ? hid. 
© Thid., 57. 8 Thid., 53. 
5! hid. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 121 


objective and general center and form. . . . To die is not therefore to 
cease absolutely to live, still less, to cease to be; it is simply not to respond 
any more to a given stimulus, not to react any more to a given agent. 
. . . Human life does not die in death, any more than it is engendered 
by generation.°* 3 

Natural death like childbirth is in its outcome a triumph of life. 
Death like birth is for man the exit from one world and the entrance 
into another; it is also an awakening from a sympathetic slumber, a 
dream, the ceasing to fee/ in common with and by the body, the loosing 
of the bonds that the body imposed on the spirit, the commencement of 
an immediate contact with a purer air, a purer light, and purer objects.” 


The whole process of human development may thus be sum- 


marized as follows: 


In the physical birth of man, the physical life, implanted in the 
human germ by the father, issues victorious under a material and physical 
form from a living and dark tomb, the mother’s womb. 

In mental, intellectual birth, the purer life implanted in the brain 
and the understanding by the light and the word, issues victorious under 
an intellectual form from a living and illumined tomb, from the brain 
and the understanding. 

In psychic birth, the soul’s life, poured into her by the breath of the 
Spirit and the virtue of the sacred Word, issues victorious under a pure 
and animic form from the very bosom of the human being, circum- 
scribed by the mind and imprisoned in the body. 

Finally in man’s legitimate rebirth through natural decease, in which 
death is to be really conquered by death, the psychic and intellectual life 
issues triumphant under the human form from the earthly form it had 
put on and which it leaves behind, to react henceforth more purely to 
the intelligible Light and the universal Life.*® 


Here, then, in Bautain’s idea of life, we have the “mother-idea”’ 
of his system. Concerning its centrality in his thinking we have 
the testimony of his anonymous Mennaisian opponent: 


German philosophy,’’ comparing phenomena and forcing the meaning 
of words, reduces to a single law the law under which God has provided 
for the perpetuation of species in the organic world and the law which 
presides over intellectual conception. MM. Bautain makes it a universal 


™ Thid., 55-56. by Franz Baader in the Revue Euro- 
* Thid., 60-61. péenne, I, 71 and 298; II, 192 and 338; 
™® Ibid., 61-62. III, 65 and 182; and especially IX, 182 


™ The reference is to articles on and ef seq. 


122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


law covering all existences, from the product of an arithmetical multipli- 
cation up to the conclusion of a syllogism, from the salt which crystallizes 
in the chemist’s vessel and the mineral which is formed in the bowels 
of the earth up to God, the prototype and archetype of all beings. Al} 
existence starting from a primitively existing point, two terms engender- 
ing a third, two factors engendering a product: that is the germinative 
point of our philosopher’s science, the foundation of all his teaching, the 
usual theme of his lectures, the text upon which his course is a perpetual 
commentary.°® 


“Life, one in itself, one in all the universe’—such is the idea 
that one must first grasp, if one is to comprehend Bautain’s phi- 
losophy as a whole. ‘That we may clearly understand the absolutely 
universal scope of this concept, it is important to stress the fact 
that it is meant to cover not only the realm of mind, and the realm 
of animate nature, but the realm of the “‘inanimate” and “inor- 
ganic,” as well. 

There is in the Propositions sur la vie a remarkable note” on 
the analogy between the process of generation and the process of 
crystallization, which I have reserved for special discussion. It 
is apropos of the expression “‘saline point’’ as applied to the invisible 
point about which the embryo forms itself: 


I call the center of the human embryo a saline point, and I would 
willingly call the central point of the crystallization of a salt a mineral 
embryo. Perhaps we shall some day recognize that the formation of 
salts and minerals, and beings called inorganic, occurs according to the 
same law as the reproduction of beings called organic, and to which 
alone we ascribe life, because we there see it manifest itself beneath 
phenomena more adapted to our manner of existence. How many cen- 
turies went by before the sex of plants, their marriage, their fecundation, 
‘their conception, were established? Analogies will perhaps lead some day 
to the same result for the beings of the mineral kingdom. 

The basis of every natural mineral is a salt, and every salt is an 
alkali or plastic form, more or less saturated by an acid. ... All the 
particles of the acid impregnate all the molecules of the alkali or other- 
wise all the unities of the multiplier act upon all the unities of the 
multiplicand, and from this operation results a product. . . . 

How does this growth of the mineral embryo take place? Is it per- 
fectly sure that it is by juxtaposition or aggregation? Might it not also 
be by intussusception, by digestion and transformation, as in the other 


"Ens. Phil. B., 568. ” Props., 18-19, note 5. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 123 


reigns of nature? May not the center of the salt absorb and assimilate 
the nourishment floating in the eau-mére by a mode of nutrition peculiar 
to itself, and afterwards develop from within out what it has assimilated? 
. . . If these masses are the product of aggregation, . . . why does one 
molecule become the center rather than another? Why should it attract 
instead of being attracted?—for they are all under the same conditions 
in the midst of the eau-mére. ... 

I simply set forth analogies which may help us to get an inkling of 
the identity of the laws of reproduction in all the realms, in spite of the 
difference of forms, instruments, and means. When we call the mineral 
kingdom dead and inorganic, we mean, without doubt, that it does not 
live after our fashion; that it does not fee! and act like us, by organs 
hike curs. It remains to say what to feel and to act are, and if they 
cannot take place where we see neither nerves nor muscles, nor fibres, 
nor anything that resembles them. 


This daring extension of the concept of life to inorganic nature 
was the chief object of attack on the part of Bautain’s examiners 
when he defended his thesis before the Faculty of Medecine. We 
fortunately have a most interesting document to enlighten us on 
the details of this dramatic confrontation of Philosophy and Science: 
a tiny anonymous pamphlet*® issued by one of Bautain’s admirers 
after the much-discussed examination. Bautain, it appears, was 
“like Socrates, unable to reply to his judges”; and his anonymous 


admirer feels called upon to dispel the somewhat painful impression 
thus created. 


A single word [he says] ... seems to us to explain everything; 
that is, that the Faculty and M. Bautain had not taken their stand upon 
the same ground: one party was on the ground of the physicists, the 
other on that of the philosophers. . . . These sciences depend upon 
philosophical doctrines quite different from his own. ... M. Bautain 
said it himself in a notable way in his replies: he did not concern him- 
self with justifying or refuting . . . the physical and physiological doc- 
trines of our day. He contented himself with showing the analogies of 
physical life with all life, and thus the simple probabilities with which 
present-day physics or chemistry furnish us; as for example [here is a 
reference to the principal objection of the examiners] the fact that the 
metals have not been decomposed up to the present moment can be no 
obstacle to the presentation of such analogies. 


Un Mot sur la soutenance de M. 
Bautain, Strasbourg, 1826. 


124 - "THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Bautain would have been delighted with the modern theory of 
positive and negative electrons, and the decomposition of elements 
in radioactivity ! 

In Cosmology, then, Bautain is a pronounced panpsychist—or 
at the very least, a panvitalist. All things are animate, and ani- 
mistic terms are appropriate in describing them. Do the chemical 
atoms “attract” and “repel” each other? Bautain suspects that 
something quasipsychological is involved in the process, and speaks 
of “affinity” and “antipathy.” Do table-tipping and table-tapping 
astound the public? Bautain is not surprised. After attending a 
few séances, he comes to the conclusion that, although these phe- 
nomena have a certain similarity to those associated with “animal 
magnetism,” “artificial somnambulism,” and “the peculiar motives 
which in certain cases impel us to decide and act almost without our 
knowledge and, as it were, in spite of ourselves,” they are more 
probably just what they appear to be: “intellectual phenomena in 
inorganic beings.” This, he feels, should give the final blow to 
materialism and naturalism!°* We should note, however, that 
Bautain’s panpsychism, unlike Paulsen’s, is not a corollary of a 
parallelistic theory of body and mind. Bautain is a thorough-going 
interactionist. If he looks upon the body as in some sense the 
creation of the vital principle, he nevertheless believes in a sharp 
dualism of soul and body. If he at times reminds us of the monism 
of “L’Evolution Créatrice,’ he also at times reminds us of the 
dualism of “Matiére et Mémoire.’ Of this, more anon. 

We now have in our possession, in the shape of the idea of life, 
the key which will enable us to understand and almost to predict 
the views of our philosopher on every imaginable subject. But the 
forms which this identical formula assumes in passing from one 
realm of science to another are so protean, and sometimes so un- 
expected, that we shall do well to become acquainted not only with 
the idée-meére itself, but also with the four great idées-filles (if we 
may coin the word) which stand just below it in hierarchical order, 
and which act in their turn as idées-méres for the four divisions 


of Bautain’s philosophy. I refer to the idea of God (or Being), 


* Bautain was one of the first to take pamphlet entitled: Awis aux chrétiens sur 
an interest in spiritualistic phenomena — les tables tournantes et parlantes, par un 
when the craze struck Paris, about 1850. ecclésiastigue, Paris, Devarenne et Per- 
He published his conclusions in a little  risse, 1853. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 125 


the generative principle of Ontology; the idea of Nature, the 
generative principle of Cosmology; the idea of Man, the generative 
principle of Anthropology; and the idea of rapport, which acts as 
generative principle for all other branches of philosophy, which 
Bautain classes under Anthropology because they deal with man in 
his various theoretical and practical relations. ‘The exposition of 
these four generative ideas will therefore give:us the ground-plan 
of his entire system. Since we have already been introduced to 
Bautain’s cosmology, we shall begin with the idea of Nature and 
take our leap thence into the high mysteries of Being in Itself, 
returning soon, to avoid dizziness, to the level of the humanistic 
sciences. 


1. The idea of Nature. ‘The “nature” of an object as equiva- 
lent to its Platonic ezdos. Nature and spirit. 

There are two chief conceptions of nature, says Bautain: “For 
the more superficial, nature is the visible form of the world and of 
each being; for the more profound, it is the creative force that 
animates them.”** Neither of these two conceptions wholly satis- 
fies him, however; for neither tells us what nature is “‘in itself, in 
its idea.” Modern physics is powerless to help us here. It talks 
much about “forces,” “affinities,” etc., but it is obliged to take all 
these fundamental concepts on faith as faits primitifs, “facts quite 
as mysterious as the hooks on the atoms of Epicurus or the occult 
qualities of the Middle Ages.”** If Philosophy suspends judgment 
until Science settles such questions, she will remain forever in 
suspense; for Science in our days has turned her attention from 
these high questions, and has become “‘the servant of the body and 


64 Bautain therefore goes back to a more 


the servant of industry. 
daring and less abjectly scientific philosophy, and finds in the 
Platonic theory of ideas the clue to the nature of nature. 

We know no object as it is in itself, he remarks; yet in the 
subjective impression which it leaves upon us—an impression con- 
ditioned by “its constitution and organization, its situation and ours, 


9965 


and the intervening media”®°°—we have a genuine product of the 


object itself. If therefore we eliminate from our impression of 


® Psych. Exp., I, 128. al 7 Oe eee 
® Thid., 129. © Tbid., 132-133. 


126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


various objects all that is accidental and adventitious, we shall find 
that our idea of each object is composed of three main factors: 
an idea of its individuality; an idea of its substance, form, or 
generic qualities; and an idea of its animating lfe-force or spint. 
It is the second of these ideas to which we refer when we speak 
of the nature of the object. 


But [he continues] if the idea of a single form, substantial and 
peculiar to the genus of the object, is the basis of its image in my mind, 
as the prototype of this idea is the basis of the object which exists out- 
side of me; if I conceive nothing in any existence which can be anterior 
to that basis; if it is this plasm (plastique) of the object which constitutes 
its generic characteristic, the support of its properties, the substratum of 
its qualities, it will also be true to say that it is this, and not the palpable, 
visible material, which constitutes the substance beneath the accident, the 
noumenon beneath the phenomenon. The plasm of each being is its 
extreme inwardness, the fixed, stable, indestructible substance; and the 
extreme outwardness is the phenomenon which varies, the form which 
perishes. This p/asem, the same in all individuals of the same genus, 
and in which the need of life is inherent—as in every germ, in every 
created form—this central force which so powerfully attracts the spirit 
of life and which is the root from which the existence develops, is what 
constitutes the mature of the thing. Physical nature, be it general or 
particular, is therefore, in each creature, the pure form of the physical 
life, or the capacity to attract it and receive it, joined with the power 
of reacting towards it.®° 


The world as it appears to us is therefore not Nature itself, but 
Nature’s appearance, “‘the child of Nature by the Spirit which 
animates it, by the life which fecundates it, . . . Nature objecti- 
vated or made manifest.”°’ This implies that the “nature” of 
each reality is found in two different states. In the first, it is 
“latent, like an unlit hearth, . . . inert, motionless, fixed; it is 
chained within itself, as if swallowed up in its own depths.”** In 
the second state, which ensues only upon stimulation or fecundation 
by some external life-force, it is active and actual. 


The inward makes a motion to advance, progresses, passes outward; 
. substance manifests itself as qualities, the 0umenon as phenomenon. 
Nature then shows herself as a form which conceives, travails, brings 


© Peych, Exp. I, 134-135. ® rhid., 136. 
* Thid., 135. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 127 


forth, and nourishes; as plasm, as mother, matura naturans, and she tends 
with all her strength . . . on the one hand to attract the food which 
she needs to sustain what she bears... and on the other hand she 
posits it more and more outwardly, pushes it ever farther on toward 
birth, toward the plenitude of development, to the end that... her 
potentiality may be wholly manifested and pass into actuality.® 


If, now, we ask which of these two states represents the nature 
of the object more truly, we shall have to answer that it is freest 
from chance, change, and corruption in the latent state, where it 
exists timelessly and invisibly. In this invisible realm of latency 
subsists eternally the “divine idea” of every manner of creature, 
“the final cause of their creation and their existence.” For each 
possible genus and species there is an idea, which unites all the 
members of the species in an organism “in the likeness of the 
divine Tri-unity.” Each individual creature has therefore a “‘gen- 
eral life whereby he communicates with his generating principle 
and with his genus,” and also a “particular life, which manifests 
in its own way the general life with which he is animated, which 
realizes . . . the divine idea of which he is the more or less distant 
expression—for the succession of the generations is the development 
of the idea of the Creator in the world, through Nature!” In 
this teaching of Bautain’s, Platonic and Aristotelian elements are 
mingled in a most interesting fashion with elements drawn from 
current Romanticism. 

But what is this external force—this “life” or “spirit? —which 
calls realities from potentiality into actuality? What is spirit? 
Here is an idea which seems to be implied in the idea of nature, 
as one of its necessary ingredients. Until we understand what 
spirit is, we have not fully understood what nature is. 

Bautain feels that Descartes’ definition of spirit as res cogitans 
has proved its absurdity by the consequences which have been de- 
duced from it, chief of which is the conclusion that animals are 
machines. ‘‘Experience and common sense,”’ says Bautain, 
force us to recognize in animals a life analogous to man’s, thonat 
of an inferior degree, and consequently an animal spirit which 
animates and moves their organism, although without consciousness 


® Thid.. 136-137. ” Tbhid., 138. 


128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


and reflection.”"* As we have seen, he is disposed to extend the 


concept beyond the animal world to the inanimate world. ‘This 
he justifies by the remark that the qualities by which the empirical 
school is wont to distinguish matter from spirit—extension, weight, 
form, color, etc.—may quite possibly be purely phenomenal ex- 
pressions of hidden causes; and these causes might well be spiritual, 
as was urged by the Occasionalists. 

In place of Descartes’ definition of spirit, Bautain puts the fol- 
lowing: “‘the first product of a nature, the immediate result of 
the action which fecundates it and its emergence from itself, its 
outward positing, its ex-position.”"* If we call latent nature sub- 
stance, we may call active nature spirit. “They correspond to being 
and existence, plasm and life, germ and sperm, base and acid. 
Spirit is volatile, like gas; though attached to its parent substance 
during life, it “easily passes from one object to another, and thus 
is variously modified.”’’* So long as its substance remains in vital 
relation with the superior life which is its source and nutriment, 
the spirit remains attached to the parent stem; when this relation 
is broken, nothing perishes. ‘“The spirit persists and goes seeking a 
new base and a new form. ‘The substance is indestructible, and 
it awaits another fecundation, whence will issue a new spirit.” 
The organic molecules remain, to be worked up into new organisms 
by new spirits. Spirit, finally, is the intermediary whereby sub- 
stances communicate with one another. Substances are impene- 
trable monads; they “‘can no more penetrate than centers can; they 
touch each other only by their spirit, by their form, as centers do 
19 Spirits, on the other 
hand, are capable of uniting with one another in more or less 


by their radu, by their circumferences. 


stable unions; they “interpenetrate with one another, and like rays 
of light they meet and pass through one another without becoming 
alloyed.’’*® 


There are in the universe two kinds of spirits, corresponding to 


™ Psych. Exp., I, 141. cumstances (and they are innumerable) 
7 Thid., 147-148. which may influence and modify its de- 
8 Thid.. 155. ‘Hence the immense di- velopment.” Jbid., 166. 

versity of spirits, each being a function ™ Thid., 168-169. 

of the base or the substance from which ® Thid., 175. 

it issues, the fecundating agent which Te bids A197; 


develops it, and finally, of all the cir- 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 129 


the two great classes of substances: heavenly and earthly, spiritual 
and material, psychical and physical. Animals, vegetables, and 
minerals are purely terrestrial spirits. To this class belongs the 
Earth, our great mother. Like Fechner, Bautain believes in the 
existence of an Earth-Spirit, child of Mother Earth, fecundated by 
the life-giving rays of the sun. From the Earth-Spirit is derived 
the physical life of all earth’s creatures.‘ ‘To the class of purely 
heavenly spirits belong the angels, first creation of deity, nourished 
by the divine Life itself. To the class of ‘‘mixed” spirits, half 
of earth and half of heaven, half intelligent and half physical, 
belong the World-Spirit or Macrocosm, and man, the microcosm, 
each of them an organism in which spirit and matter, soul and 


body, are strangely blended. 


The worlds [concludes Bautain] are attached to one another by the 
transmission of spirit: the divine world to the world of the intelligences 
by the divine Spirit, the intelligible world to the terrestrial world by the 
psychic spirit, the human spirit, acting upon the physical spirit and 
through it upon matter, whatever the form and degree of its organiza- 
tion may be. And spirit everywhere is life; it is the movement of 
alternation by which it operates; it is therefore by life, and by it alone, 
that substances may be penetrated: it is life which opens them, fecundates 
them, develops them, and it is by life again that they communicate with 
each other.”$ | 


2. The idea of Being, or God. ‘The Trinity. Origin of the 
world of time and space. The problem of evil and the problem 
of redemption. 

As, in the created universe, each substance issues from an in- 
visible center, and makes itself a visible form by the great law of 
polarization, so in the realm of ultimate reality, the realm of the 
divine, the same law holds good; or rather, the laws which govern 
the created universe are more or less inexact copies of the law 
according to which the three persons of the Godhead are eternally 
generated out of the indivisible One. For Bautain, as for Hegel, 
the Doctrine of the Trinity is the central Christian doctrine. He 
explains its meaning in various ways, recognizing that no one 


™ See the pamphlet, Un mot sur la “World Spirit,” see Psych. Exp., I, 185- 
soutenance de M. Bautain, already cited. 186. 
Cf. Psych. Exp., I, 85-86. On, the ® Psych. Exp. I, 177. 


130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


terrestrial analogy can possibly exhaust its celestial meaning. The 
three persons are to each other as essence, existence, and life; or as 
foyer, pole, and axis; or as “One and... Duality, returning 
by a third term to Unity;”™ or, finally, as Subject, Object, and 
Rapport. We need not dwell upon this aspect of Bautain’s phi- 
losophy, save to point out that he differs in one important respect 
from the Romanticists and Idealists whose views he seems to be 
following so closely. For them, the universe itself forms one of 
the moments in the eternal rhythm of the divine nature; God had 
to manifest Himself in Nature and History, in order to know 
Himself, and in order to find an object for His affections. For 
Bautain, on the contrary, God is self-contained and self-sufficient; 
He is Himself a sufficient object for infinite knowledge, love, and 
activity; He is therefore in no sense dependent upon the universe, 
and the universe is absolutely dependent upon Him. If He 
created us, it was out of pure love, and not out of necessity.*° 

To say that God “created us,” or that He created the universe 
as we know it, is not strictly accurate. This world of time and 
space, of mortality and suffering, is not the world that God created. 
The true, or celestial world is perfect and changeless; it is eternally 
conceived and generated in the womb of the divine Wisdom or 
Understanding, forever fertilized by the influx of the divine Life 
or Spirit. Each point on the all-embracing sphere of the divine 
Wisdom is a potential center of life; fertilized by the divine Life, 
It passes into eternal actuality, and becomes an immortal spirit. In 
its potential state, the celestial world is the world of the substances, 
the world of the Platonic reals, which subsist in the divine Under- 
standing “as their ideas or images live, subsist, and move in our 
understanding.” In its actualized state, the celestial world is the 
world of the heavenly spirits or angels, each of whom manifests 
some eternal Idea and lives by the divine Spirit. 

How, then, did this terrestrial world come into existence? It 
was the product of a Fall—a fall out of eternity into time, space, 
and mortality; a fall whose evil consequences far outrun those of 


™ Rev. Eur., IV, 60. (De VPimpuis- © See especially Phil. Chr., Letters 18 
sance de la raison humaine a fonder la and 19, and Choses de Vautre monde, 
science métaphysique.) 120-140, for Bautain’s idea of the 


Trinity. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST ba 


Adam’s fall, which it far antedated and helped to predetermine. 
The possibility of this fall lay in the fact that the bond which 
eternally unites the angels to their divine Source and Goal is a 
free bond, a bond of love and gratitude. If an angelic being is 
grateful and wise, it will devote itself wholly to the contemplation 
of God, and so find life and health and joy; but it may, if it will, 
devote itself instead to self-contemplation, and attempt to be auton- 
omous. This attempt is folly, of course, and if successful would 
lead to utter self-destruction. In mercy, God contends with the 
would-be suicide, and continues to sustain him in existence; He 
prevents his destruction, but He cannot prevent his degradation 
without violating the freedom of his will, which alone makes 
possible his redemption. ‘Thus, the temporal and visible universe 
in which we human beings live resulted, according to Bautain, 
from the foolish self-will of a celestial spirit. We are all im- 
plicated in the organism of the “World-Spirit’; our organisms 
are parts of it; we share in its degradation, which we may help 
either to increase or to diminish. ‘The origin of this world and 
the origin of evil are identical—which, at a stroke, disposes of the 
problem of evil. 

“The first effect of evil,” says Bautain, “was time, which became 
the basis and law of all the intelligences; then, space, the basis and 
law of the phenomenal world.”** 

In Bautain’s doctrine of time, there is a curious mingling of 
Kantian and Neo-Platonic ideas. He accepts Kant’s view that 
time, as we human beings experience it, is purely subjective. It is 
“the form of our internal sensibility, the intuitive vision of our- 


> and it comes into existence, for us, only 


selves and of our state,’ 
when we become self-conscious, and begin to distinguish our inner 
states from the external world. Nevertheless, he feels that this 
human and subjective experience presupposes something more ob- 
jective and general. Man is a temporal creature not merely be- 
cause he is conscious of the flux of his existence, but because his 


existence zs in flux, even before his self-consciousness awakes. He 


8! All quotations in this section are the problem of evil and the plan of 
from FB,V2, Principes de philosophie salvation, see also the last few letters in 
Métaphysique. On time, see chap. v of the Philosophie du Christianisme. 
this manuscript; on space, chap. v1. On 


10 


132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


is a product of the triumph of a “particular, centralizing force” 
over the “spirit, or general force,” the individualization of a 
species; and he is bound at last to redress the disturbed balance of 
things by death, which is “the restitution of the particular to the 
general.” In a more objective sense, then, the “time” of each 
human being is measured out by the pendulum-swing of the oscilla- 
tory movement of life, which fills the interval between these two 
determining moments of birth and death. Moreover, birth and 
death are characteristic of the whole terrestrial world, and not 
merely of man; hence, says Bautain, “there is a general time 
embracing all particular times, within which every temporal crea- 
ture 1s born and dies, . . . a general rotation within which every 
oscillation, every particular notion occurs.” This general time, 
which is “anterior, parallel, and posterior” to the time which we 
create for ourselves, is the creation of the ‘“‘World-Spirit,” the 
result of the egocentric motion which he initiated when he first, 
“attempting to triumph over the universal force, . . . posited him- 
self as an organism, as a self, faced with a self, as a subject-object 
or personality.” General time is “the perpetual oscillation of the 
life of this false organism, the rotation on its own axis of a self 
continually dying and reborn.” To use a simile of Royce’s, the 
“‘time-span”? cf the World-Spirit includes our human time-spans 
as a sentence includes its words or a symphony its separate melodies; 
but this is not true of Bautain’s God, as it is of Royce’s. For God 
and the angels, and for the human soul when it works free from 
the dominion of the senses, there is no time. 

To recapitulate in Bautain’s own words: “Evil is .. . the 
isolation of the particular in the universal. ‘The effect of evil is 
time, which is a product of ... the reflection and turning-back 
of the creature upon itself; and the consequence of the effect, the 
product of isolated reflection, time raised to the first power, time 
ex-posed or outwardly posited, is space.” 

Bautain distinguishes between size (étendue), space, and pure 
extension. The size (i.e., the body) of each phenomenal creature, 
is the section of space which it appropriates for itself in the course 
of its organic development; it is bounded by its “‘poles” or “cardinal 
points.” “Space,” says Bautain, “is the great organism [Macro- 
cosmus| containing simultaneously every étendue, every particular 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST Hak 


organism; it is bounded by the poles or cardinal points of the 
phenomenal world.” Pure extension is “the manifestation of the 
Infinite”; it bodies God forth as étendue bodies forth the finite 
individual. It is identical with the divine Understanding. As 
étendue is carved out of space, and presupposes it, so space is carved 
out of pure extension, and presupposes it. 

Besides all these, Bautain distinguishes a fourth kind of space, 
Kantian space, which is “the form of our general external sensi- 
bility, as time is the form of our internal sensibility.” Kantian 
space arises in self-consciousness through contact with the Not-Self ; 
more specifically, through the visual measuring of the distance 
which separates me from the object which resists me. Thus, while 
the subject creates his own time, there can be no space without an 
object—and this applies to étendue and general space as well as 
to particular or Kantian space. If time is the interval between 
two vital acts of the same vital center, space is the relation between 
two vital centers. Kantian space applies primarily to the human 
individual; but the ““World-Spirit,” by analogy, is said to have not 
only an organism (étendue) but an “empire,” a “space,” a “world 
external to himself,” which is a portion of pure extension circum- 
scribed by his visual horizon. ‘This circumscribed portion of pure 
extension is all that gives reality to the world of time and space: 


Time passes, forms change; but space, which contains time and form, 
is immovable, imperturbable, and changes not, for it is subject to the 
law of pure extension, the eternal Wisdom ... which gives fixity, 
permanence, and stability to space, and which, arresting time, which is 
only flux and vicissitude, gives it a sort of reality or present in and 


through space. 


Caught in this world of time and space, involved in the fate of 
the World-Spirit, man is in imminent danger of being whirled 
away in the flux of things; yet it is his high calling to win his way 
up through level after level of existence, until he arrives at the 
homeland of the soul, and becomes one with the divine Life. In 
the first stages of his development, he lives mainly in the physical 
world, the world of space, the world of the things that pass away. 
Seeking to subdue this world to his will, he finds himself frustrated, 
for this is the realm of Destiny, the realm of “rigid forms” and 


134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


“inflexible law.” Things attract him and lure him out of himself, 
and then brutally contravene or ignore him; his life is one long 
fruitless combat. Discouraged and exhausted, he then retreats 
within himself, into the world of spirit, the world of time; and, 
suddenly, ‘‘Destiny loses its sway over him.”’ But Stoic equanimity 
is not the final goal of man’s pilgrimage. 


His primal law [says Bautain] is love, communication, devotion to his 
fellow-men; and that law, so sweet and so divine in itself, becomes a 
heavy yoke for man, as soon as he isolates himself and attempts to live 
for himself alone. But if at last he issues from himself, no longer to 

. create a domain for himself in space and to enter into the agita- 
tions of time, but to act secretly and silently like Nature, to give himself 
like light, to devote himself like love, then he comes under the sole sway 
of the law of pure extension, the law of the eternal Wisdom. .. . As 
fast as the self is lost or universalized, bits of knowledge gather them- 
selves into true science, science grows into luminous self-evidence, and 
the love of self becomes the love of the universal—and such is the end 
of man, towards which his whole life should be directed, and whose 
delights he tastes, in proportion as he fixes his heart upon it and draws 
ever nearer to it. 


3. The idea of man. 

We are now prepared to grasp, without much effort, the idea of 
man. He is, as we have seen, a mixed spirit, with a double nature 
or substance—“‘a child of Earth and of starry Heaven,” as the 
old Orphics put it. If it be asked how a being so curiously com- 
pounded can cohere, and how a soul and body so radically different 
from one another can interact, the answer is simple: soul-substance 
and corporeal substance can never directly interact, but through 
their spirits they can both cohere and interact. Man has, in fact, 
three spirits: an intelligent spirit or intelligence, whereby he com- 
munes with purely intelligible realities; an animal spirit, whose 
organs are the semses, whereby he communes with the sensible or 
phenomenal world; and a mixed spirit, the reason, whereby he 
combines and sifts the data furnished by the senses. “Thus com- 
pounded, man is the epitome of the universe; and_ philosophy 
accordingly begins with self-knowledge. 

Whence came man? from below, or from above? from Nature, 
or from God? Even in those pre-Darwinian days, the theory 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 135 


was current that man had evolved from inanimate and unconscious 
Nature. The idea of evolution, of development, is so central with 
Bautain that we might expect him to agree with Schelling and 
Hegel at this point; but he does not. 


Abandoned to herself [he says], physical Nature turns forever in the 
same circle; like a serpent, it coils and uncoils, shut up in a fatal sequence 
of cause and effect in the cycle of necessity. The animals never go 
beyond the range of their instincts; the most industrious do no better 
to-day than six thousand years ago, and the most stupid are still at the 
same stage. No advancement, no progress is to be discerned either in 
the species or in the individual, If there is any amelioration in the 
world, speaking generally, it is due to the freedom and intelligence of 
man. . . . Without man the world would have no sense, for it would 
have no purpose.®? 


If Bautain is an evolutionist, then it is in a purely Neo-Platonic 
sense; man can evolve because he is in a state of degradation; he 
can rise because he has fallen. 

From the idea of man there spring directly the sciences of pure 
and experimental psychology, and, indirectly, the sciences of 
theodicy, ethics, and logic. 


Anthropology, starting with the data furnished it by ontology with 
respect to the origin and nature of man, considers the human soul in its 
root and in its purely spiritual development, as pure psychology; in its 
mixed development through the body, as experimental psychology. 

It explains the relation of man with his Author, as Theodicy; the 
relation of man with his fellows in Ethics or Morals; and his relations 
with sensible and rational things in Logic, including Epistemology.** 


It remains only for us to explain the idea of relation, or rapport, 
which is the key to the last-named sciences. 


4. The idea of rapport. 

As we have already seen, relation is one of the three great func- 
tions that constitute the va-et-vient between the organism and the 
environment—or, to maintain the proper order, between the en- 
vironment and the organism. ‘The philosophical scope of this con- 


© Psych. Exp., I, 152-153. De Régny, 309-310; cf. Psych. Exp., 
I, 62 ef seg. 


136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


cept is best revealed in the elaborate “Note on the word rapport,” 
in the introductory part of the Psychologie Expérimentale.™* In 
it the epistemological consequences of the concept of life appear, 
intimately bound up with various moral and political consequences; 
for the gist of Bautain’s theory of knowledge is this: that knowl- 
edge is only one form of the general process of action and reaction 
between environment and organism, and a secondary form at that, 
being subordinate to moral or voluntary activity—a thoroughgoing 
Voluntarism, which is, at the same time, a thoroughgoing Realism, 
for the object in the knowing process makes the first move. 

“No creature,” begins Bautain, “lives by itself, or for itself.”*° 
By the very fact that it belongs to a world, its existence depends 
upon the reciprocal commerce of all, on the continuousness of this 
commerce, on action and reaction between each Ego and all the 
non-Egos. ‘This “commerce” constitutes relationship (rapport). 


Every real relation presupposes two terms that are living and not 
creatures of reason, but which exist, and which the reason is obliged to 
admit as necessary data in order that there may be a possibility of a 
relation: two terms distinct and opposed though not contrary to each 
other . . . which act upon each other, and which are to one another as 
active and passive, the one giving, the other receiving.®® 


The active term—here the ethical corollaries begin to appear—has 
authority over the passive, and gives it life and nourishment, if it 
reacts. Among all creatures this process of action and reaction 
is simultaneous, which causes life to circulate “in all the spheres, 
in all the worlds, in each particular existence in the world.” ' 


I say the circulation of life, for life belongs to no creature; there is but 
one Being who has life in Himself, of Himself, by Himself, and it is 
He who disseminates it continuously in all the creation: there is but 
one Father.%® 


Man’s physical life is dependent on a process of va-et-vient, 
between him and the light, the air, and other physical agents; his 
mental life, on a process of va-et-vient between him and ‘“‘the 

* Psych, Exp., I, 83-91. 7 rhid., 84. 


* Ibid., 83. *® Ibid. 
* Tbid., 83-84. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST P37 


word,” and other social agencies; the earth’s natural life, on a 
process of va-et-vient between her and the sun; the earth’s culti- 
vated life, on a process of va-et-vient between her and man’s hand 
and mind; man’s normal life, on a process of va-et-vient between 
him and the family or society; man’s “‘psychic” life, on a process 
of va-et-vient between his inmost soul and the divine Life which 
is its source. 

The meaning of this in the moral and political sphere is obvious. 
In the family and in patriarchal society, the source of authority 
is paternity. Paternity is both human and divine. 


The father transmits the life which comes originally from the source 
of all life and transmits it according to the sacred laws of life; hence 
the expression filial piety, to designate the free and positive reaction of 
the son toward the father . . . whence results the union, the prosperity, 
the stability of the family, its duration, its long life on earth. It is the 
same with a mation, which is but a great family issued from the same 
trunk. Its legislation is largely composed of the traditions of the an- 
cestors, and the elders are the chiefs of the tribe.®® 


In peoples, where tradition is broken, the action which commences 
the organic relation that makes it a social body is performed by a 
chief or leader. “It is not popular choice which makes the king. 
. . . The populace does not say, ‘I make you king’; it says ‘Here 
is my king.’”*° The people’s acceptance of the king’s rule, and 
their free homage, are what establish the vital process of va-ct-vient 
on which the people’s life and health depend. The king owes 
justice to his people partly by virtue of his paternal relation to 
them, partly by virtue of his filial relation to a higher Power. 
“The authority once constituted, obedience to the laws and to the 
government becomes obligatory for the people. It must react by 
SUMS OMe a ns 
In relations between individuals the same law holds good. 


Of two men in present and direct relation,°? there will always be one 
who will prevail over the other, either by force of body, or by the 
reason, by the intelligence, by the will. The stronger will thereby be 


© Thid., 87-88. attitude of the good Catholic toward the 
” Thid., 88. Holy See is obvious. 
™ Tbid., 89. The application to the Teacher and pupil, for example. 


138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


the support and stay, or the oppressor of the weak; and the latter will 
cling to his patron, or reject the oppression if he can. . . . Support, 
benevolence and protection, on the one hand; trust, affection and grati- 
tude on the other; this is the law . . . of justice founded in nature.*” 


In the discussion of the relations of man and God, Bautain’s 
theory of religious knowledge is clearly foreshadowed. Man’s 
highest life is in his soul, and his soul is born and nourished by 
the influx of the divine Life. Hence his highest duty—and high- 
est cognitive act—is free and positive reaction thereto. “He must 
answer with the heart, with love, to the Love which gives itself; 
he must make a corresponding reaction to the creating and sustaining 
action.”°* The initiative is God’s, who first loved us; man can 
no more escape the stimulus of God’s love than he can escape from 


the environing air. 
\ 
But [adds Bautain] he can refuse his reaction. ... In that case 
he lives an animal and reasonable life, but he does not know psychac 
life; he is in relation with nature and his fellows, but not with God; 
he is as if dead, or rather he is not born into the intelligible world, and 
his mind understands nothing of the laws of that world, of metaphysical 
truths, of the nature of things.’ ‘The law of love applied to an invisible 
object, to what does not fall beneath the senses, seems to him a folly, 
or weighs upon him like a yoke. He is oppressed by it, and like the 
poisonous plant which turns into venom the solar ray, he corrupts in 
himself the divine gift. Hence the uneasiness, the world-weariness 
(dégout), the kind of moral fever which torments so many young men 
in our days.*° 


Through the idea of rapport, then, the idée-mére of Bautain’s 
system, life as conditioned spontaneity,’ descends into the phe- 
nomenal realm and becomes a guiding principle for man in all 
his practical relations. It may well seem that in ethics and politics 
it is not the spontaneity of life, but its necessary conditioning by 
external stimulation and external authority that is emphasized. 
When we come to Bautain’s philosophy of education, however, it 
is the other side of his life-formula that strikes our attention. As 


8 Psych. Exp., I, 89-90. taneity,” as a succinct formula for Bau- 
™ Thid., 90. tain’s central idea, to Prof. Baudin. 
* Italics mine. Bautain himself, while he objects to 
Psych. Exp., I, 90-91. Fichte’s “absolute spontaneity,” coins no 


*"T owe the phrase “conditioned spon- phrase to describe his own position. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 139 
against the view of education as a sort of coin-minting or putty- 
molding process—a view all too common among Catholic educa- 
tors’*—Bautain upholds the view that education is essentially ‘“‘the 
stimulation of the vital energies by means of language, the fecun- 
dation of the germs of truth and goodness contained in the human 
mind and heart, the intelligent culture of the human plant, the 
most marvellous and delicate of all plants, by adapting oneself to 
the spontaneous unfolding (jeu) of its natural laws, and never 
violating them.’”’® In his theory of education, Bautain is almost 
at one with Pestalozzi, Froebel, and all the great Romanticists. 

It is true that Bautain insists upon the necessity of discipline, 
arbitrary authority, and the appeal to fear in the training of young 
children. He mocks at Rousseau’s instructor who is so afraid of 
enslaving the will of his master. He will not explain to young 
children the motives of his commandments; let them guess his 
reasons if they can.’ He does not trust unregenerate human 
nature to develop rightly without much pruning; the germs of a 
higher moral and spiritual nature must be “grafted” upon it by 
the educator.*** 

Nevertheless, the whole aim of this course of discipline is not 
to impose something upon the individual, but to free the hidden 
spiritual capacities which lie dormant, incapable of releasing them- 
selves, within the shell of his physical nature. The figure of the 
“craft” must not be pressed: “The master may exercise his power 
over the disciple . 
law of another will, and if the word of the master has not in it 
the germ of a more powerful and purer life, the graft will not 
take.”?°? It is the natural order of the child’s development which 
must be stimulated, directed, fortified, and perfected by instruction, 
and each stage in this development will “indicate to us of itself the 
subject of instruction which corresponds to it.” “The problem 
will be solved by Nature itself.”*°* As education proceeds, love 


. . but he cannot force the will to receive the 


* See the analysis of Catholic educa- 
tional theory in G. A. Coe’s Social Theory 
of Religious Education, Part V. 

® Baudin, Louis Bautain, le philosophe 
de Strasbourg, 23. 

1 Ratisbonne, 
morale, 5-19, 


Essai sur Veducation 


1 Variétés, 7-9. 

aa (77 

1% Carl, L’Enseignement de la rheto- 
rique, doit-it précéder ... celui de la 
logique? 8. 


140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


takes the place of fear; insight, the place of authority. Ultimately, 
the pupil is left face to face with the facts, in direct commerce with 
Reality itself, and all mediate stimulating agencies, such as teachers 
and books, are to be done away with. Modern French education, 
with its emphasis on book-learning and quantitative memorization 
of hearsay, with its absurd manuals of predigested knowledge for 
the passing of the all-controlling Baccalaureate examination,*”* is 
not education at all, properly speaking: “we read and listen more 
than we see and feel; there is almost always a book between us and 
the object, and we do not trouble ourselves sufficiently to verify 
what we have read, and to check up by our experience what others 
have sai Fullness of expertence—the whole man fully devel- 
oped by coming into living commerce with the whole of Reality— 
that is the goal of education for Bautain. If the life-formula 
seems to make authority predominate at the start, it makes spon- 
taneity and freedom predominate at the end. It is indeed Bau- 
tain’s chief contention that liberty is only to be achieved through 
submissiveness to authority. 

It would not serve our present purpose to go farther into the 
manifold applications of the concept of life. They are often 
bizarre—as when he describes the generation of the circle by the 
self-polarization of the mathematical point, or when he deduces 
the five vowels as representing various stages in the process of the 
“subjectivation of the objective, and the objectivation of the sub- 
jective”; *°° and a collection of absurdities could easily be gathered 
from his pages which would dissuade any self-respecting philo- 
sophical student from devoting any further attention to him. 
That, in fact, is what most of Bautain’s critics have done. But if 
one grasps at the start his central concept of “life”—a concept, 
be it noted, that is based upon a genuine knowledge of physiology 
and genetic psychology—one is at last almost tempted to see sense 
in all these absurdities, so persuasive is the eloquence with which 
our philosopher develops the consequences of his theory. Of the 


d 99105 


1 See Bautain’s admirable book, L’Edu- 
cation publique en France au XIXme 
siécle, chap. xxvu1 and passim. 

18 Psych. Exp., I, 223. 

1% Thid., II, 473. “The O is the A 
fully objectivated, as the divine Wisdom 


is the manifestation of God, as the uni- 
verse is the manifestation of the divine 
Wisdom.” It is the upper pole of A as 
U is its lower pole, and as E and I are its 
diameters. 


BAUTAIN AS PANVITALIST 141 


magical power of that eloquence, even the hostile Mennaisian bears 
witness, in a graphic picture, drawn from the life, of our phil- 
osopher spinning the web of his system, and catching his auditors 
in its tenuous folds: 


He loves to lead you adrift into a labyrinth of digressions, which 
come one after another and lead you far off from the subject. ‘Thereby, 
he strikes, he astonishes, he dizzies the imagination. . . . He works upon 
it first by brilliant descriptions; it reacts toward him by the pleasure it 
takes in listening to him; he continues to talk to it, he tempts it, he 
seduces it, it begins to be moved; . . . the line of demarkation between 
the real world and the imaginary world is gradually effaced; nuances 
melt into one another; you seem to see, thrcugh a transparent language, 
all the objects that are named to you; you do not perceive that each 
object changes its form several times while you are still considering it 
under an identical name; the magician’s wand draws you contours of an 
admirable purity; his index finger stretches out and pursues an existence 
escaping from a center; his eyes, attentively fixed on his finger, flash out 
after it; your eyes follow the movement of his eyes and the direction 
of his finger, and you believe that you are witnessing, with him, a 
generative radiation, a creation; . . . and when, from that ecstatic state, 
he lets you come back to yourself, you find nothing left... but a 
dizziness of the head, an oscillatory rocking of the brain, and certain 
discolored images, without consistency, impalpable, vaporous, and already 
torn with a hundred rents, which vanish when you stretch out your hand 
to clutch them.?% 


Having now in hand the clue to this philosophical labyrinth, the 
reader may be expected to find his way henceforth without difficulty. 


1” Ens. Phil. B, 545-547. 


CHA PALE REEL 
BAUTAIN AS A VOLUNTARIST 


N spire oF Bautain’s bristling hostility to Aristotle and the 
Scholastics, there is much in his philosophy that ought to appeal 
strongly to the most ardent neo-Scholastic. His conception of 
life as a passage out of potentiality into actuality at the solicitation 
of an external stimulus is at the bottom a thoroughly Aristotelian 
conception; and our contemporary Catholic neo-Vitalists, if they 
returned to the study of Bautain, would undoubtedly find in him 
a congenial spirit, capable of enlightening them on more than one 
dificult problem. In a sense, Bautain’s is the most Catholic of 
all philosophies; for its very corner-stone is the proposition that 
the attitude of the Catholic when he humbles himself before 
ecclesiastical authority is the attitude required of man by his place 
in the universe, and the proper attitude to take in all life’s relations. 
When we come to Bautain’s theory of knowledge, however, we 
see the justification for the suspicion with which he has been 
regarded by Catholics. Let us admit the worst at once: he is one 
of the original progenitors, in France, of that voluntaristic, anti- 
intellectualistic philosophy of religion which formed so character- 
istic a feature of the Modernist movement of 1893-1908. Having 
admitted the worst at the start, we are entitled to plead for a stay 
of sentence on the part of the Catholic reader, until certain evidence 
in mitigation of the offence has been reviewed. Meanwhile, the 
student of the history of philosophy will be interested to find in 
Bautain’s epistemology many anticipations of recent philosophical 
tendencies such as pragmatism and Bergsonian intuitionism; and 
the student of Protestant theology will be interested to note the 
parallels between the new apologetic inaugurated by Bautain and 
that inaugurated by Schleiermacher. 


I 
BAUTAIN’s CRITIQUE OF THE REaAson: His ANTI- 
INTELLECTUALISM 
It has been customary to see in Bautain simply a radical anti- 
intellectualist, a fanatical “‘fideist,” demanding the sacrifice of the 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 143 


reason upon the altar of religion, calling for blind and implicit 
faith in an essentially irrational revelation. If this be “‘fideism,” 
it is most unfair to make Bautain the father of it. He does indeed 
speak of the “impotence of the reason to found a metaphysic”’’ and 
of the necessity of “believing without seeing”’*—expressions which 
give color to the foregoing interpretation, and which, as he often 
frankly admitted in later hfe, were unduly disparaging to the 
reason; but his real intent was to correct and complete the Kantian 
critique of the reason by making a psychological study of the place 
of reason among the human faculties, and by pointing the way 
to a theory of religious knowledge based not on rational “‘postulates” 
but on moral and religious experience. “Thus,” as he himself 
says, ““we do not exclude the reason either from science or from 
religion, but we limit its use, and that by virtue of an exact and 
thorough critique of its nature and its capacities.” 

Bautain’s new Kritik der reinen Vernunft never was completed; 
but we may easily reproduce the main outlines of the projected 
magnum opus by piecing together the many epistemological writings 
which Bautain produced in his Strasbourg period. It has two parts: 
a logical critique of the reason, in which he follows Kant; and a 
psychological critique, in which he endeavors to supplement Kant. 

We may dismiss Bautain’s logical critique of the reason with 
a few words. ‘“‘He may be reproached,” as Ferraz justly remarks, 
“with having reproduced in too vague and summary a fashion the 
arguments which the German philosopher develops so firmly and 
precisely.”* His main contentions may be reduced to two: first, 
that the reason cannot prove its own axioms, principles, and laws; 
second, that these same rational laws, categories, etc., which the 
reason has to accept on trust if it is to function at all, are inap- 
plicable in the sphere of metaphysics and theology—so much so 
that the reason falls into hopeless antinomies when it endeavors 
either to prove or to disprove any metaphysical or theological 
proposition. In support of the first contention, he points to the 
Kantian forms of the understanding, “inherent in the reason, 


1Title of his article in Rev. Eur., IV, 8 Thid., 9, recto. 


58 et seq. * Op. cit., 344. 
* FB,H9, verso. 


144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


essential to it,”’ and therefore not to be judged by it—unless reason 
could somehow get outside and above itself. In support of the 
second, he points to the famous Antinomies as conclusive proof 
of the metaphysical impotence of the reason; to prove its theological 
impotence, he supplements the Antinomies with a set of theological 
puzzles of his own. | 


The Law of Substance, which affirms that there is no quality without a 
substance, is applicable only where substance manifests itself and dis- 
tinguishes itself by qualities, by accidents. Applied to the divine 
world, to God, it no longer has any sense, because God is He who Is, 
and in Him there is only being and substance, and nothing accidental, 
contingent, or phenomenal. ... It is the same with the following 
axioms: Nothing comes from nothing; the whole is greater than the 
part; the whole is equal to the sum of its parts.® 


All such rational axioms lead to pantheism when applied to God; 
and a rationalistic theology like Scholasticism therefore ‘“compro- 
mises the high verities it intends to defend.’”’ 

But if Bautain follows Kant too tamely and too summarily in 
his logical critique, it is otherwise with his psychological critique. 
Here, after all, is where his main emphasis is laid; for it is on the 
psychological side, as he believes, that the Kantian critique needs 
correction and supplementation. He characterizes Kant, as “a 
powerful thinker, but a weak psychologist.”* No good psycholo- 
gist, he urges, would ever make so sharp a distinction between the 
theoretical and practical reason; ‘‘the human reason has never 
actually found itself in the situation supposed by Kant.’ But 
Kant’s worst mistake was to make reason man’s highest faculty, and 
man’s sole cognitive faculty, whereas psychology shows that “‘man 
is sensitive, volitional, intelligent, before he is, or can be, reasonable 
or reasoning.”*® “The Critique of the Reason,” he concludes, “‘has 
determined the power of the reason, but not its nature and its rank 
in the spiritual organization of man; and that is the point at which 
he should have started.”** Our study of Bautain’s critique of the 


* Letter to Riambourg, FB,K, Cahier ° Lettre a Mgr. Lepappe, 20; cf. Mor. 


Gass Ev. D., 248. 
° Psych. Exp., II, 363.  Variétés, 11-12. 
* Ibid. 1 Ibid. 


8 FB,V3, 18. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 145 


reason will mainly consist, therefore, of a review of his genetic 
psychology of the knowing process. Here, as we shall find, is the 
key to his low estimate of the cognitive validity of reason, as com- 
pared with that of intuition (“intelligence”), faith, and revelation. 


1. Genetic psychology of the knowing process: priority of will 
over intellect. 

Bautain’s psychology of cognition falls into two parts. In the 
first, he traces the evolution of the mind from the undifferentiated 
soul, and the evolution of the various cognitive faculties and senses 
from the undifferentiated mind. In the second, he traces the de- 
velopment of the capacity of cognition in the child. 

Now that we are familiar with the process by which the organism 
evolves out of the vital principle, we should be prepared to under- 
stand the process by which the cognitive faculties evolve out of the 
soul. ‘The two processes are strictly parallel; the former is the 
outward manifestation of the latter. 

First of all, then, the genesis of the mind itself is to be sought 
in something deeper than the mind, and prior to it in order of 
development: the will, or the soul. As the heart “posits” the 
brain, sending it forth like a follicle issuing from a seed, so the 
soul puts forth the mind. The mind is, as it were, the soul’s 
specialized function of cognition; but the soul itself was cognitive 
before it put forth the mind; and, even after the genesis of mind, 
the soul’s knowledge includes more than that which is conveyed to 
it by the mind. Experience, in other words, is prior to the specific 
function of cognition, and represents something more inclusive 
than cognition. The foetus does not know, yet it experiences: “it 
feels, but it is not conscious of the sensation it experiences; it does 
not know that it feels, or what it feels.”’* Even in the adult, 
there is a penumbra of vague experience or soul-knowledge forever 
surrounding and far outrunning the narrow field of clear cognition. 

It is well to dwell for a moment upon Bautain’s concept of 
experience. For Locke, experience is a purely passive and intel- 
lectual process; for Fichte, a purely active and ethical process. 
For Bautain, experience is partly passive and partly active; for him, 


” Propositions, 28. 


146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


as for Fichte, it is primarily vital and practical, and only second- 
arily cognitive; its content consists not merely of “ideas” and 


“sensations,” but also and in the first instance, of actions and 
reactions.*® 
‘““Experience,” says Bautain, “is the indispensable condition of 


knowledge”’;** but experience, as he describes it, begins with a 
wholly unconscious outward motion of the spirit toward the stimu- 
lating object. “In reacting toward the external object which im- 
presses it, the spirit tends to issue from itself to posit itself in the 
object, while at the same time it receives and absorbs what the 
object posits in it.””° Only on the rebound, on the vient which 
follows the va, does spirit catch itself in the act of communicating 
with the object, and so become cognizant. Reflection upon ex- 
perience, in other words, is the beginning of knowledge. 

Just as the soul “‘posits’**® the mind, as an organ of cognition, 
while yet remaining susceptible to many impressions over and above 
those which it receives through the mind, so the mind (or “reason’” 
or “understanding”; Bautain uses the terms interchangeably at 
times) posits the various senses. 


All sensation presupposes in the sentient subject the foyer, the sense, 
and the organ. The foyer is the capacity in which the impressions come 
to unite themselves, the central point where the vibrations of life resound 
or come to their final harbor; it is what is called the sensorium commune. 
The senses are the radii of the foyer, the conductors of the vital action; 
the organs of external perception, all located on the surface of the body, 
are the poles of the foyer, the extreme ends of the radii, the inter- 
mediaries between the subjective spiritual world and the objective mate- 
rial world, the gateways of communication between the me and the 
physical world.*? 


3 He differs from Fichte in conceiving 
the process realistically, not idealistically. 
The object is there before the subject, 
and makes the first move in the process 
of wva-et-vient which constitutes experi- 
ence. 

Psych. Exp., 1, 221. 

* Ibid., 224. 

* The word poser (or se poser) seems 
to be used as a technical philosophical 
term in Bautain’s writings, so I trans- 
late it pretty uniformly by the philo- 
sophical term posit; but its meaning is 


vague and shifting, being much affected 
by Bautain’s fondness for biological 
metaphors. Here, the soul “posits”? its 
mind as a plant “puts forth” its leaves. 
When it is said (p. 94) that spirit issues 
from itself to “posit itself (se poser) 
in the object, a sexual metaphor seems 
to be implied. More generally, the verb 
means “to objectivate, to call into exist- 
ence,” or simply “to lay down a proposi- 
tion.” 


™ Psych. Exp., 1, 262-263. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 147 


The senses must not be confused with the sense-organs: 


Sense in itself is purely spiritual; it is a ray [rayow—ray or radius] 
and as it were a prolation of the mind: the organ is material; it is a 
part of the body. . . . There must be a midpoint, where organic life 
and mind meet and interpenetrate; but it is impossible for us to apprehend 
it by observation.*$ 


The distinctness of sense from organ and the priority of the 
former, follow from the fact that while the organ is dependent 
upon the sense, the sensation is sometimes possible without the organ. 


A dead or artificial eye, or a camera obscura, also reproduces an image, 
but they do not see. . . . Behind the eye, the optic nerve, and the brain, 
there is a living and active principle which has the faculty of vision, as 
it has that of willing and feeling. 

And so [he adds elsewhere] we see that the function of each sense, 
although attached more particularly to an organ, is nevertheless not ab- 
solutely dependent on it; for if that organ happens to be lacking, the 
sense breaks out (se fait jour) at another point, trying to create a new 
organ, and the mind reaches almost the same knowledge by way of an- 
other avenue—less trustworthy and convenient to be sure, because it is 


not in conformity with the natural plan of the organism.’® 
\ 


To sum up, then: the sense-organs are the material instruments 
of the senses, which in turn are “radiations from a single center, 
the sensorium commune, which 1s itself but a pole or secondary 
center of the one general faculty of sensation (sensibilité).”*° By 
the faculty of sensation, Bautain means that part of the mind 
which is directed toward the material universe. When directed 
intuitively toward ideas, the mind is called the intelligence, while 
between the senses and the intelligence lies another mental faculty, 
the reason, whose function is to work up discursively and combine 
logically the data furnished it by them. All these mental faculties, 
finally, are secondary functionaries of the soul, whose chief func- 
tionary is the wi//. Certainly the “functional” point of view in 
psychology was never pushed farther than this! 

Turning now from this somewhat speculative account of the 
“descent of spirit into matter,” we return to the world of experi- 


8 Thid., 263. ° Thid. 
* Ibid., 293 and 371. 


11 


148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


ence, and ask ourselves how knowledge originates and develops in 
the individual. Here we shall be following an inverse order of 
evolution; for the senses, which are the outer shell of the soul, are 
the first of the soul’s capacities to pass into activity. ““Che develop- 
ment of physical man .. . takes place in descending order,” says 
Bautain, “‘since he goes from unity to multiplicity; that of spiritual 
man takes place in ascending order, since he goes from multiplicity 
to unity.”** Having watched the soul split up into faculties in 
descending into matter, we are now to watch it unify itself as it 
ascends out of matter. 

The child’s first mental act, and the first step in each subsequent 
act of cognition is an act of “conception,” strictly analogous to 
physical conception. Without conception, no knowledge. Sensa- 
tions and perceptions furnish the materials for knowledge; but, 
until conception gathers them up into a unified representation, “into 
a single vue @ensemble, into a sign,”** cognition cannot be said to 
have begun. And when conception has taken place, the most sig- 
nificant stage in conception has been passed. Conception, says 
Bautain, is the punctum saliens of thought, the seed from which 
all else springs. The best that reasoning can do is to develop the 
implications which were implicit in this seed from the first, or, 
from time to time, gather up these developments into the seed once 
more, “again like Nature, which gathers up into the seed all the 
results of the development of the plant.”** “The fundamental 
condition of right knowledge,” says Bautain, “is therefore right 
conception . . . and that is just what education, instruction, and 
toil can never give, any more than cultivation changes the nature 
of the seed.”** Like physical conception, intellectual conception 
involves four. terms: 

(1). A passive form or capacity fit to receive fecundation, and 
to contain and nourish the product. 

(2). Germs ready for fecundation, contained in this mother- 
form. 

(3). A fecundating agent. 


(4). A reaction to the initial stimulus of the fecundating agent. 


(1). A passive form—the Understanding. 


* Poych. Ret, 1) 3460 0 led, oe 8 Thid. *4 Thid. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 149 


By the “Understanding” Bautain means something far more | 


specific than Locke’s “human understanding,” and something 
different from the Kantian Verstand, which is identical with the 
judgment. He means that power, inherent in the mind, which 
Kant “has perfectly distinguished”: the Vorstellungsvermégen, or 
capacity of “bringing back to the unity of its form all the intui- 
tions of experience, so as to reduce them to a representative con- 
ception, to render them comprehensible.”’? It may be called a 
“mental matrix,” a “camera obscura,” a “living mirror of the soul.” 


It is a luminous sphere in the center of which the soul, the psychic 
eye, has its seat, which, by its glance and visual radius, itself traces the 
boundaries of its world. The understanding is to the soul what the cir- 
cumference is to the geometrical point: it sets a limit to its development; 
it circumscribes its radiation.** The form of the understanding is there- 
foresthat. ofa world... 

It is a mirror with two faces; one convex, turned toward the exterior 
world, receives sense impressions and reproduces the images of objects, 
and in this case one may say that it spiritualizes matter, idealizes the 
concrete, by the conceptions that it forms; the other concave, turned 
inward toward the psychic and intelligent nature, receives impressions of 
the things which correspond to it, and, making us conceive them as images, 
sensualizes the spiritual and, up to a certain point, materializes the ideal.?" 


(2). Germs of Knowledge, ready for fecundation. 

Here Bautain touches upon the vexed question of “‘innate ideas.” 
“There is no more an innate idea in the human understanding,” 
he says, “than there is an innate human being in the womb of 
woman; but in both cases there are germs awaiting fecundation in 
order to take on life and to develop.”** ‘Thus Bautain’s theory 
differs both from the tabula rasa theory of Locke and from the 
theory of a “deposit of ideas, all formed, or, as it is commonly 
expressed, engraved within our soul.”*’ It admits, for example, 
that we all possess the germs of the knowledge of good and evil, 
but insists that, “if a word of authority does not lay down the law 
before us and in us, . . . the germ will remain sterile, the idea 


will not form.’’®® 


* Tbid., 6. 7! Psych. Exp., I, 4, 5, 9. 
* Bautain remarks elsewhere that the wiipaaee | f. 

mental powers of different men are to ” Ibid. 

each other as the radii of their spheres paints 


of understanding. 


150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Each conception thus contains an a priori element and an a 
posteriori element, and opens the way to two separate orders of 
knowledge. 

On the one hand, conception implies the presence in the under- 
standing, in embryo, “before all experience,”** of “the general and 
particular forms which are the bases of our conceptions, or other- 
wise the germs of all knowledge.”** These include “rational 
axioms, mathematical definitions, and those transcendental affirma- 
tions which are marked at the very start with the character of the 
yh aL US\ anisesa ity jewel 
science, best illustrated by mathematics, which is completely @ priort, 
being founded on reflection upon the “pure and general forms of 
the development of life and the laws which preside over it, in so 
far as these laws are inherent in our soul, in our faculties, in our 
understanding, and consequently in all the germs which develop in 
it.’** This type of science expresses itself “by synthetic @ priori 
judgments, by apodictic propositions, posited on the occasion of 
facts, but not founded on facts and not drawing their vitality 
therefrom.””*® 


universal, the infinite, the absolute. 


‘To deny such propositions or even to discuss them 
is “to call the human reason into question; it is to take away from 
it all means of operating and of proving anything.”*® 

On the other hand, conception involves an objective stimulus, 
and so gives rise to a posteriori or experimental sciences. It is 
noteworthy, however, that each a posteriori science has an a@ priori 
element in it, a “pure” or “‘transcendental” side as well as a “his- 
torical” or “empirical” side. This @ priori element is “‘above 
“ and “furnishes principles for reasoning,”** to dispute 
which would be to destroy the possibility of making progress in 
the science. “Hence the necessary @ friort judgments of the 
theologian, the philosopher, the artist, the physicist; hence the 
dogmas, the original definitions, the axioms, the aphorisms, the 
higher rules of art”*°—all of which like the theorems of mathe- 
matics are absolutely necessary, while the empirical part of science, 
on the contrary, is always subject to revision and criticism. 


discussion,’”® 





* Psych. Exp., I, 13. 89 Thid. 
Ths 11: 87 Thid., 16. 
© Theda Lele 8 Thid. 
*4 Thid., 14. © Ibid 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 151 


(3). A fecundating agent. 

In accordance with his high estimate of the dignity of the sense 
of sight, Bautain gives to that agent which fecundates the under- 
standing the name of light. All knowledge, all truth, even though 
it comes through nature or through men, even though it enters 
through the sense of hearing or the sense of taste, flows ultimately 
from the Eternal Light whose beams are incessantly beating upon 
us in the endeavor to communicate the Truth to us; and it does 
not rise to the status of knowledge until it is not merely felt or 
sensed but seen. “The prophet or genius occasionally gets an “illumi- 
nation”: “Eternal Light, enlightening his intelligence, there pro- 
duces those sublime conceptions which are half of heaven and 
half of earth, and which he is obliged to express in the manner of 
40 Most of us, however, 
can trace the immediate paternity of our mental concepts to some 


men in order to be understood of men. 


natural object or some human teacher, who in this case acts as a 
transmitting agent for the divine Light, “a delegate of Him from 
whom all paternity in heaven and earth is derived,”** a considera- 
tion which gives a certain sacredness to the teacher’s task. The 
case of natural objects is not so clear as that of human teachers; it 
is hard to see how natural objects can be conceived to impart their 
truth actively, deliberately, insistently, to the dormant mind, as a 
teacher does. But it must be remembered, in the first place, that 
Bautain has a vitalistic view of Nature, and, in the second place, 
that, like Berkeley, he sees God everywhere behind Nature, insist- 
ently signalling to man. 


(4). Reaction of the soul to the initial external stimulus. 

The environment takes the initiative, to be sure, in the formation 
of knowledge as in all the relations of life; it is the father of 
our knowledge; but our mind is the mother thereof. Did not the 
mind react, conception could not occur. As in the physical order, 
mental conception often occurs when least expected; response does 
not always ensue upon the first stimulus. 


You are listening to an eloquent man, a minister of the sacred word, 
a philosopher, a politician, an orator, a lawyer, a schoolmaster if you 


@ Ibid, 0-21. Si1bid £21. 


152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


will—the degree or the form matters little, so long as the word is warm, 
vital, full of light and intelligence or full of feeling and soul—and 
suddenly you feel yourself dominated, penetrated, moved; something 
has entered you which has illuminated your mind or touched your heart. 
You react instinctively, without reflection, almost unconsciously to that 
word which draws and charms you; the ray of the Truth pierces you in 
the midst of the floods, of light wherewith she inundates you. The germ 
of a new idea is fecundated in your understanding; you have conceived.** 


This first mental reaction of the vital principle in the child to 
the stimulus of the environment is akin to what later becomes the 
act of attention; but Bautain is unwilling to call it attention at this 
stage. It is only a step removed from those blind and instinctive 
preferential reactions which occur everywhere in the organic and 
inorganic realms, wherever a “particular life” responds to the 
“oeneral life’: the reaction of an animal to its prey, the reaction 
of a seed to the sunlight, the reaction of an acid to a base—for 
Bautain sees a certain discernment, and one might almost say a 
choice, in chemical reactions. Attention, properly speaking, does 
not appear until, with the development of self-consciousness in the 
child, the stage of moral liberty and personality succeeds to that 
of physical liberty and individuality—which, says Bautain, is “com- 
mon to persons and things.’’** 

Bautain’s account of the development of self-consciousness is 
interesting. At first, he says, the child is “as if identified or fused 
with his environment.”** He has not yet acquired even individual- 
ity. ‘The consciousness of individuality, or “personal unity,” grows 
with the consciousness of need; “‘it becomes more trenchant and 
precise as needs multiply.”*° At this stage the child speaks of 
himself in the third person, and “he knows himself .. . only 
from without, by his exterior form, about as one sees oneself in 
a mirror.”*” Animals are capable of reaching this stage. Person- 
ality comes only with the beginning of the comprehension of 
language. ‘““The self of the child is awakened by the opposition of 
another self which makes itself felt in him by speech or by action.”’*” 
Speech makes thought possible: ‘Our thoughts, our reflections, and 

“ Psych. Exp., I, 24-25. * Thid., 97. 


Merde ssa  Thid. 
“ Thid., 95, “ Thid., 98. 


a 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 153 


all the operations they involve, are produced by the aid of the signs 
of language. ‘That is why the child talks before thinking; for 
it is only by hearing speech that he acquires by the hearing the 
necessary signs for the formation and expression of his thought.”’** 
Full-fledged self-consciousness involves a further step, reflection 
upon one’s own thoughts, and this develops through internal con- 
versation. 


To understand oneself well, one must begin by talking to oneself. 
Thought, however abstract it may be, is never anything but an interior 
speech. Now, it is when the child becomes capable of thus talking to 
himself inside, and objectifying by reflection what he feels, conceives, 
and wills, that he acquires the consciousness of the self and of his 
personality.*® 


In the course of this evolution of self-consciousness, true 
attention begins to manifest itself, particularly in the glance of the 
child’s eyes. Attention, says Bautain, is “an act rather than a 
faculty”’°—an act of the soul, which darts forth through the 
senses like 


the spider in the midst of the web she has posited by her activity, and 
with which she has cleverly enveloped herself, extending her feet on the 
principal radii of the circle whose center she is; so that, the least move- 
ment of the extremities being communicated to the center, she reacts with 
suddenness and darts to the point which has been moved.°? 


She never darts to more than one point at a time; Condillac is 
wrong in supposing that the judgment of relation is a simultaneous 
act; it 1s successive, for the soul is caught invincibly in the web 
of time; but the mind reduces to unity the duality of the impres- 
sions gathered successively by the attention. 

Attention is very closely allied to the will; it is “the first exer- 
cise of moral liberty or voluntary reaction toward a certain 
object.”°* Its vigor depends partly on the vigor of the external 
stimulus and its suitability to the state of the organism, and partly 
on the vigor of the will. “Obstacles, when they are not over- 


whelming, excite to a high degree the reaction of the will”’’ and 
* Thid., 99. se org oi 153 
® Tbhid., 100. © Tbid., 114. 


 Thid., 117. 8 Thid., 119. 


154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


so aid attention. You may always win attention, if you speak to 
the soul of “‘what she loves, what she desires, what she fears, what 
she hopes.””* 

Attention has three forms: external observation, reflection or 
internal observation, and contemplation, which “‘is in the intellectual 
order what prayer is in the moral order, an elevation of the soul 
to God.”®? ‘The moral act must always underlie the intellectual 
act; it is the pure in heart who see God. “Attention, in its three 
modes, is thus in relation with the concrete or with individualities 
through the senses, with the abstract or with generality [the world 
of thought] by reflection, with the infinite or with universality 
through contemplation.”°® 

We have now reached the point in mental development where 
we can begin to talk about thoughé. Sense-impressions are the raw 
material for thought; conception puts this raw material in shape 
to handle; attention is nascent thought; but thought does not begin 
until self-consciousness is complete—a proposition whose converse 
is also true. “It seems as though an act of thought were necessary 
to constitute the self, and nevertheless, without the self already 
posited, the act of thought appears impossible.”°’ Reason is help- 
less to decide this question; “we must appeal to experience which 
cuts through the difficulty with the sword of fact, while reason is 
vainly laboring to untie it.”°* Experience shows that the first act 
of thought is the act by which self-consciousness constitutes itself: 
“an act of sovereignty whereby the self recognizes itself and 
establishes itself as the center of all its operations, the substance 
of all its modifications, the chief of all that emanates from it and 
from the environment.” 

The aim of thought is explanation. Man is the only creature 
who demands explanations, for he alone seeks to bring all other 
creatures under his rule by means of his intelligence. “To explain 
nature is to form a system of concepts parallel to the system of 
things, which man “can compose and decompose in his mind as 
6° thus facilitating the 
handling and mastering of nature. As to the accuracy of such 


nature makes and unmakes the existences, 


* Psych, Exp., I, 120. % Thid. 
® rhid., 129. ® Thid. 
 Thid., 130. © Ibid., 139. 


* rhid.. 138. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 155 


7 . . . 61 
systems of concepts, ‘“‘experience decides more than discussion.” 


“All the functions of thought reduce themselves to a single act, 
to judge.”°’ Judgment is akin to choice; the mind, like the will, 
acts chiefly by choosing.®* Man is “obliged to act in the midst of 
opposing or diverse terms which dispute with each other for his 
consent and seek his preference.”°* ‘The conscious and reflective 
element in judgment is not the essential thing. The real reason 
we are able to judge and discern between good and bad, beautiful 
and ugly, etc., is that we have a sort of taste or feeling for these 
distinctions—an évidence intuitive :°° 





This feeling, this original taste, contains virtually in itself all the judg- 
ments that we shall pass upon things; . . . consequently, all the work 
of the mind and of speech is to explain to ourselves and to others what 
we have felt. The mind’s reflection transforms feeling into judgment; 
it decomposes the brute fact into its various elements, . .. then it 
translates the result into propositions which enounce successively and in 
order what was simultaneous and confused.®® 


When the power to judge manifests itself, reason may be said 
to have dawned. Judgment is, according to Bautain’s analysis, 
“the simplest act of the reason.” It begins to be exercised even 
before the child learns the use of articulate language. But reason- 
ing, which Bautain calls “the most complex act of the reason,” is 
impossible without a highly developed language. Induction and 
deduction are both essentially linguistic processes; “‘it is always a 
case of reducing several signs to a single one, which then becomes 
a general term, or resolving a single sign into several, which are 
to it what individuals are to the species and the genus.”* ‘To 
explain the formation of language is therefore,” he concludes, “to 
explain the primitive development of the reason.”®* 

We shall not go into Bautain’s philosophy of language,® al- 


© Ibid. * Psych. Exp., I, 141. 
© Thid., 140. ® Thid., 163. 
If asked how a priori judgments, © Thid., 165-166. 
which he has declared (p. 99) to be bs at 397: 
“absolutely necessary,” can be matters of 8 Thid., 201. 
choice, Bautain would probably answer ® For Bautain’s philosophy of lan- 


that choice is not always arbitrary. In guage, see Psych. Exp., II, 106-143. 
the case of a priori judgments, the com- Cf. Adolph Carl’s two theses, on “The 
pass of the human will is fixed and Origin and Nature of Human Speech,” 
invariable; in the case of empirical judg- and “Articulate Language,” Strasbourg, 
ments, it is apt to fluctuate. Silbermann, 1827. 


156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


though he accords to it a place of great importance in his psychology 
of cognition. On the whole, the less attention paid to it, the 
better for our philosopher’s reputation. He has an almost Sweden- 
borgian reverence for the divine mysteries of etymology; and he 
is even disposed to take Plato’s “Cratylus” seriously! We may 
sum the matter up by saying that all articulate languages are in- 
perfect expressions of a spontaneous language common to all men, 
and best seen in the untaught ejaculations of the child. If 
language accomplished its ideal purpose, it would constitute a series 
of words entirely parallel to the series of real things and events, 
which reason could then handle as if it were dealing with the facts 
themselves; but, unfortunately, as language becomes articulate, it 
ceases gradually to represent the object, as it did in its spontaneous 
stage, and comes more and more to represent the reflective reactions 
of the subject—and reflection distorts everything. Rational dis- 
putation is therefore apt to lead us farther and farther from the 
truth, because of the inaccuracy of the linguistic tools with which 
it operates. The appeal to experience from the court of reason 
is always justifiable. 

Reason’s great failing is abstraction. “It operates on the things 
of the spirit as anatomy does on the body: it dissects, divides, de- 
composes, and consequently it presupposes death—or it kills.” 
Nature is alive; her primary process is typified by the development 
of the plant from the seed; it is a progression from unity to 
multiplicity, in which the original unity is never lost. If there- 
fore, thought is to seize the true order of things, it ought to follow 
the order of nature, and seize first the spirit, the life, the germina- 
tive principle which constitutes the unity of the phenomenon under 
investigation. It should look at things, as Bautain says, “from 
above downward”’; or as Bergson would say, from within. Reason 
is capable, under higher guidance, of following this logic of nature, 
which Bautain (most misleadingly) calls analysis, or deduction; 
but, left to itself, reason always prefers the method of synthests, of 
induction, of aggregation and segregation. It prefers to treat things 
not as organic wholes, but as isolated and infinitely divisible frag- 
ments, which can be combined mechanically into a logical structure, 
as a house is built of bricks. It looks at things “from below 


® Psych. Exp., II, 333. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST evs 


upward, contrary to the natural order, and retracing, so to speak, 
the steps by which nature posits and develops the ‘facts.”’* Reason, 
left to itself, is therefore perpetually tending to reduce organisms 
to mechanisms, and the whole body of natural science, which is the 
typical product of the unaided human reason, presents a thoroughly 
artificial view of the world, compounded, as Bautain puts it, not 
of true ideas, but of mere notions. 

If, therefore, man is able to know things as organic, living, and 
intelligent; if he has intimations of a spiritual world behind the 
natural; if, in spite of what his reason tells him, he refuses to see 
in the universe a great mechanism, it implies that he possesses a 
faculty higher than reason, responsive to deeper realities than reason 
is cognizant of. To this faculty Bautain gives the name of 
intelligence. If reasoning be “‘the most complex act of the mind,” 
the exercise of the intelligence is “the purest act of the mind.” 

In the earlier stages of the child’s development, intelligence is 
not distinguishable as a distinct faculty.’” It manifests itself only 
in certain types of attention, judgment, and reasoning. ‘The child 
is a little animal, to whom the material world seems far more real 
than the spiritual world. He knows about the spiritual world only 
what his elders tell him, in the course of his moral and religious 
instruction. Intelligence appears in him as faith—a confused 
premonition of the truth of what his elders tell him. Faith is 
hardly to be called knowledge; yet if the child is not taught the 
moral law and the first principles of religion, or if he deliberately 
rejects such teaching, his intelligence will never develop. 

It is at the critical period of adolescence that the intelligence 
develops as a separate faculty. “The adolescent is at the portal of 
a new and larger world: “there is a new life in his inner nature, 
a life of the heart, a life of affection which declares itself by the 
need of loving, and a life of the intelligence which manifests 
itself in the need of admiring.” This “need of admiring,” or 
love of beauty, may attach itself exclusively to some human object 
of affection, or it may lead on to a lifelong quest for “the supreme 
and imperishable Beauty.” Still higher than the love of beauty, 


" Thid., 341. cally considered,” see Psych. Exp., II, 
™For the following account of the §§ 158-161. 
“development of the intelligence geneti- 


158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


because still more detached from the phenomenal world, is the love 
of truth. ‘This, too, is a characteristic adolescent phenomenon. 
The child asks “‘why,” but is satisfied with more or less superficial 
explanations; in the adolescent, the love of truth becomes a con- 
suming thirst for ultimate explanation. “In all things it is pushed 
to the infinite, and is not satisfied unless it perceives in each ques- 
tion, in each science, the relation of the infinite to the finite and 
the living bond that unites them.” With most men this is a passing 
phase; but there are those who make the pursuit of Absolute Truth 
their lifelong mission. ‘These are the “men of the infinite,” the 
men of intelligence, the heaven-sent geniuses and prophets who 
make up by the keenness of their intelligence for the sodden un- 
receptiveness of the rest of us. 

With the development of the intelligence, we would seem to 
be at the end of our genetic psychology of cognition; for the 
intelligence is the highest of the cognitive faculties. 


But [says Bautain] man is not made merely to know and to admire; 
he is above all created to love; and thus the development of his in- 
telligence should lead to the development of his soul; truth should lead to 
goodness, knowledge to love. He should become more enlightened only 
to become better. It is in the sovereign Good and by love that his 
intellectual perfection is consummated; for in the real universe the True 
is the expression of the good, and the Beautiful, the splendor of the 
‘True."8 


‘There is a higher knowledge, then, than even the knowledge of 
the intelligence: the knowledge of the heart. “That which is deep- 
est in us responds to that which is deepest in reality; and that 
which is deepest in us is not the mind, but the will, the heart, the 
soul. If, then, the metaphysician is to be perfectly prepared for 
his task, he must not only, as Plato advises, learn to love Beauty 
through the love of beautiful objects, and rise from love of Beauty 
to love of Truth; he must also learn, through the love of family, 
of country, of humanity, of enemies, of all creatures great and 
small, to love “the supreme Good who gives Himself to all and 
excepts none.”"* If we would know, we must first love; for 


“love alone unites intimately to the object,””* while cold intellectual 


73 Psych. Exp., II, 407-408. 74 Thid., 409. hid, 408. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST TS? 


curiosity contents itself with externals, and ill-will or impurity 
absolutely distorts the vision. ‘The dialectic of the intelligence thus. 
leads into the dialectic of the will; the conditions of knowledge 
are ultimately moral. Faith, the beginning of virtue, and Love, 
the perfection of virtue, are at the same time the beginning and 
end of all wisdom and all knowledge. 

We see, then, that one source of Bautain’s anti-intellectualism 
is his psychological voluntarism: the doctrine of the primacy of 
the will, and the instrumental character of the intellect. But the 
will is not the only thing that Bautain ranks above reason; “‘intel- 
ligence,” faith, and tradition also stand above it in his estimation. 
We must therefore class him not only as a voluntarist, but also as 
an intuitionist, a fideist, and a traditionalist. Our understanding 
of his “Critique of the Reason” will not be complete until we 
have explained each of these terms with some care. 


2. Reason and intelligence: Bautain as an intuitionist. 

First of all, then, the contrast between reason and intelligence 
with which we are already familiar, implies an intuitionism similar 
to Bergson’s. This will become abundantly clear if we pause to 
examine Bautain’s doctrine a bit more carefully. 

Intelligence, reason, and imagination are, according to Bautain, 
the three “powers” of the mind. ‘They spring from the same 
mind, and yet are distinct,’* for they differ according to the natures 
from which they have issued, and the objects toward which they 
direct their attention. Imagination is purely physical, and conveys 
knowledge of the physical world alone; reason is an esprit mixte, 
on the border-line between the physical and the spiritual, capable of 
inferring the existence of the spiritual world but not capable of 
describing it; intelligence is purely spiritual, communicating 1m- 
mediately with the intelligible world and the divine Wisdom. The 
imagination gives us images; the reason gives us motions; the in- 
telligence gives us zdeas. “The reason plus the imagination—which 
Bautain often loosely comprehends within the term “reason”— 
can at best give us empirical knowledge, connaissance, the Platonic 
do&a. Science, émiotyjun, the knowledge of the metaphysical world, 
is attainable only through a higher faculty. 


 Thid., § 154. 


160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


It is by the psychic eye that you enter into relation with the intelligible 
light, with the spiritual world, with the Truth; and since» . . Truth 
is the daughter of Heaven, you must lift the soul’s glance toward the 
celestial region to find and contemplate her. In vain would you seek 
for her through the reason, since reason is the soul directing its glance 
toward the things of earth. . . . It sees only the shadows below, the 
figures, or the reflections of what exists on high in idea, in truth, in 
substance, You must not try to seek . . . the day-star on earth, or try 
to see the earth in the sun; you must see them each in its place and in 
their mutual relations.7” 


How can one distinguish intelligence from reason, psychologi- 
cally? By the fact that intelligence grasps truth immediately, all 
at once, while “the action of the reason, on the contrary .. . is 
always complex, successive, fractional; . . . its highest operation, 
reasoning, is the sign of its imperfection, since it proceeds slowly 
from the known to the unknown, borrowing the aid of middle 
terms to unite extremes whose relation is not immediately seized.” 
Boethius expressed it perfectly: “Reason is to the intelligence as 
time is to eternity.”’” Intelligence is more similar to the senses, 
psychologically speaking, than to the reason; it is an imterior vision. 


In neither [interior nor exterior vision] is there any active reflection, 
any admixture of thought. When I look at an object, I observe, I 
consider, but I do not think at all; and as soon as I think, I no longer 
see the outward object, but its image in my understanding. It is the 
same in the contemplation of the Truth, or of an Idea; I see, I look, 
I admire, I am penetrated by the light of the thing and feel it deliciously, 
but I do not think; and if reflection intervenes, contemplation ceases and 
enjoyment with it.8° 


In certain cases reason acts like intelligence, as when the relation 
between several terms is seized at a glance; but in those cases the 
reason is evidently penetrated by the intelligence. The more 
slowly the mind passes from one object to another by means of a 
relation, the more rational and the less intelligent it is. Bautain 
thus ascribes to reason a sort of twilight region of mediate knowl- 
edge lying between two sunlit regions of immediate knowledge, 
the region of imagination and the region of intelligence. The 


™ Pale Chrs I, 182) ™ De consolatione, lib. 5, ex prosé 4. 
8 Psych. Exp., Il, 364. © Psych. Exp., II, 372. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 161 


region of imagination is the realm of existences, of images, of 
fleeting phenomena; the region of intelligence is the realm of the 
divine, the realm of pure and changeless Being, where the Platonic 
ideas descend in stately hierarchy from the idea of Being, triply 
refracted into the ideas of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. 

The historical antecedents and affinities of this distinction be- 
tween intelligence and reason should suggest themselves at once. 
Bautain is quite conscious of the derivation of his doctrine. He 
refers to the similes of the twice-divided line and the cave, in 
Plato’s Republic; to the dialectic of beauty, in the Symposium; to 
Plotinus’s distinction®* between the eye of the body and the interior 
eye; to St. Augustine’s distinction between intellegere and ratio- 
cinari, reflected in the distinction between intellectus and ratio, 
made by St. Anselm, Gerson, St. Bernard, St. Thomas, and others.*” 
He is particularly fond, as we have seen, of Boethius’ aphorism 
that reason is to intelligence as time is to eternity. When time 
shall pass away, reason must vanish with the world of phenomena, 
but intelligence shall endure forever. 

In the Romantic period, this contrast of intelligence and reason 
was everywhere afloat, in one form or another. It was one ex- 
pression of the underlying mysticism of the times. “The matter 
was complicated, however, by the fact that terminology was in- 
consistent. Many who believed as firmly as Bautain in the 
existence of a “transcendental” intuitive faculty were accustomed 
to call it “reason” (raison, Vernunft); while they gave the name 
of “understanding” (entendement, Verstand) to Bautain’s “rea- 
son.” This was the form in which the doctrine was set forth by 
the French Eclectics; and this was the form in which Coleridge, 
influenced by Jacobi and other German Romanticists, popularized 
it in the English-speaking world. ‘There is therefore a closer 
affinity between Bautain and the New England Transcendentalists 
than might appear from their terminology. “Io Emerson, as to 
Bautain, Plato’s twice-divided line is the beginning of all philoso- 


* ‘There is one important difference, however, between Bau- 


phy.* 


% Eun. I. Bk. VI. Summa, Q. 64, Art. 2; Q. 58, Art. 3; 
Here are some of the exact refer- Gerson, De Mystica Theologia Specula- 
ences he gives: Plato, Phaedo, § 27;  tiva, Consid. XI, p. 371; XXVI, p. 382. 
Aristotle, Ethics, VI, 1; St. Augustine, 3 See the essay on Plato in Emerson’s 


De Spiritu et Anima, Bk. I, Ch. 14; De Representative Men. 
Trinitate, ch. vu, in fine; St. Thomas, 


162 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


tain and other Transcendentalists: they looked upon “reason”’ as 
an innate faculty, whereby the man of genius could pierce at once 
to the heart of reality without the aid of instruction or tradition; 
he, too, regarded it as innate, potentially, but he insisted that it 
would never develop except through docile assimilation of tradition. 

We shall return shortly to the important question of Bautain’s 
attitude to tradition. But meanwhile, let us note that reason and 
intelligence are logically as well as psychologically distinguishable. 
This comes out most clearly in Bautain’s contrast between two 
types of logic, which he calls “analysis” and “synthesis,” but which 
might better be called “‘the logic of organism” and “the logic of 
mechanism,” or “the logic of intelligence” and “the logic of 
reason.” Here once more we are reminded of Bergson. 

We have already noted, in passing, Bautain’s distinction between 
“analysis” or the “method of nature,” and “synthesis,” or “arti- 
ficial” reasoning. Paradoxically enough, he seemed to be identify- 
ing them with deduction and induction, respectively—and yet, as 
we know, he heaps bitter scorn on the syllogism. As a matter of 
fact, the identification of analysis and deduction is only a metaphor. 


Truly logical deduction [says the Mennaisian] be it ever so little 
artificial, is in his eyes but a synthesis. He will never draw you a 
conclusion, never will he lay down a chain of reasoning, he is the sworn 
enemy of reasoning; it is not demonstrations that he makes, but exposi- 
tions, and so to speak, monstrations. How, to be sure, could he demon- 
strate anything to you, starting from a principle which he admits to be 
obscure and mysterious? He can only exhibit (montrer) to you what 
has issued from the principle, and that at a certain distance from the 
source.—As one gets farther and farther from the principle, he says, all 
becomes clear.*# 


This very just observation of the Mennaisian takes us straight 
to the heart of the matter. The contrast between the two logics 
has nothing to do with the contrast between deduction and induc- 
tion. Neither should the words “analysis” and “synthesis” mislead 
us. ‘They mean the precise opposites of what they naturally suggest 
to us: “non enim analysis ea est quae naturam secat, ut partes 
deinde componat.*> The following passage from  Bautain’s 
manuscript Logigue should remove all possible misunderstandings: 


*4 Ens. Phil. B., 515. * Gratry, de Methodis Scientiarum, 25. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 163 


Condillac has well said that avalysis is the essentially natural method; 
but Nature’s analysis is not what he describes to us. Nature’s analysis is 
positive, because she posits externally what the principle contained within 
it, because she de-duces and renders evident what was mysterious and 
hidden. Condillac’s analysis is de-positive, decomposing; it destroys in- 
stead of deducing; it dissects or chops up the unity of the form, to get 
hold of the laws of life which move and animate it.*® 


In other words, the contrast with which we have to do is simply 
an application of the familiar Romanticist contrast between organ- 
ism and mechanism: the true and natural logic (analysis) is the 
logic of organism, the logic of genesis and evolution; artificial logic 
(synthesis) is the logic of mechanism, the logic of juxtaposition 
and construction. “To use the terminology of the Mennaisian, 
analysis is the method of “emanation and reabsorption, exit and 
reéntrance, extraction and reinsertion,’ while synthesis is the 
method of “aggregation and segregation.” ‘The first of these 
methods,” he observes, “shows us the genealogical relations, the 
living relations, of things; the second, their collateral relations, 
depending on their respective position, their inorganic, brute, and, 
as it were, dead relations.”*’ Or, once more, to use Bergson’s 
famous analogy, the logic of mechanism gives detached pictures 
of aspects of reality, side by side on a moving-picture reel, while 
the logic of organism gives us the living, moving reality which is 
only approached when all these pictures are thrown in swift suc- 
cession upon the screen. But let Bautain speak for himself: 


It is this vital and natural, regular and harmonious development out 
of a single idea that essentially distinguishes sczemce from every system of 
connaissance. Science, like a veritable organism, is engendered and con- 
ceived in the foyer of the spirit by intussusception, and develops out of 
a single form as does the foetus out of a human germ, as does the oak 
out of the acorn, the tree out of the seed. Covmnaissance is not develop- 
mental but constructive: it is a product of art, the fruit of the artist’s 
effort to imitate nature. It is formed by synthesis, sorting-out, aggrega- 
tion, juxtaposition. It is, in its systematic perfection, a mechanical imi- 
tation of science, as every work of art is an imitation of the efforts and 
the products of Nature. But the most perfect mechanism is never more 
than a simulacrum of organism, as the masterpiece of art is never more 
than a dead and simulated representation of life. Organism springs from 


 FBB5, § 154. Ens. Phil. B., 499-500. 


12 


164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


a living centre; it is a spirit clad in its form, which belongs to it and 
issues from it (sa forme a lui et de lui), while mechanism, dead in itself, 
is only fit, by virtue of its construction, to be the object of a vital pate 
to be regularly moved by it.®® 


What this means in general may be surmised by reflecting a 
moment upon the common characteristics of all the idealistic systems 
of the day. “They start with “the Idea’”—something very high, 
very divine, very vague, very dark, very deep, very mysterious. No 
attempt is made to prove the truth of the Idea; that would be 
superfluous. Then the Idea “unfolds,” “develops,” “manifests 
itself” in nature and history. Somewhere in the history of its 
development there is room to fit in every fact of science, and every 
philosophical theory, religion, or political system that has ever 
existed. And as it develops, behold! it becomes clear! Yea, even 
plausible! But try to reverse the process, and proceed from the 
developments back to the principle, and all becomes murky and 
doubtful once more; for, as Bautain frankly admits, in the method 
of nature the deductive movement is less difficult than the inductive. 


The first is mysterious at the starting-point, and grows clearer and gains 
in self-evidence more and more as it descends, for it is progressive—a 
natural development of the life-principle. The second is evident at 
the starting-point; it folds itself up and loses its self-evidence as it 
remounts, for it is regressive—return of the life-principle.®® 


The logic of Romanticism has remained for the most part 
shrouded in protective obscurity. Essentially dogmatic, mystical, 
and non-argumentative, it tried to conceal the fact by argumenta- 
tive subtleties; and how well it succeeded, we may judge from the 
ponderous tomes produced by its latest expositors. Stirling’s Secret 
of Hegel is perhaps the classic example. It was the great merit 
of Bautain to expound with complete frankness and naiveté the 
principles on which most of his contemporaries were proceeding 
without daring to admit it. While Hegel devotes many a thorny 
page to the discussion of the proposition Being is, Bautain calmly 
sets it up as the keystone of his logic, remarking that, as the only 


absolute and universal proposition, it is ‘‘above all discussion.”®° 


® Phil. Théol. et Math., FB,V10, § 1, © FB,BS § 160. 
note 1. ™ Ibid., §§ 77-79. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 165 


Where others deduce the consequences of their lofty first principles 
step by step, with painful logicality, Bautain simply exhibits them 
with a wave of the hand. ‘Woe to him who tries to demonstrate! 
It is the original vice of man. Man wishes to create science 
instead of seeing it. Let things demonstrate themselves.”** He 
is not even willing to define his most important terms. 


Man can define in speech [he says] only what is circumscribed, deter- 
mined by nature, or what he has himself determined according to the 
form or extent of his mind. . . . Nothing that cannot be perceived by 
the senses . . . can be embraced by the reason, and hence it cannot be 
defined in speech. Thus neither the mental that is in the physical, nor 
the psychic, much less the divine or that which partakes of the infinite, 
can be determined or defimed. . . . Truly scientific doctrine does not 
proceed by definitions; it proceeds by the simple setting forth of the 
name which represents the object of the science. One defines neither 
the mathematical point, nor arithmetical unity, nor physical force. One 
tells, to be sure, what these things are ot; one never tells what they are.°” 


The Mennaisian gives an amusing burlesque of Bautain’s tactics 
in the classroom, which in spite of its obvious exaggeration, brings 
out the practical consequences of this non-argumentative logic 
most vividly: . 


“Gentlemen [he makes the Master say], by means . . . of an effort 
of induction, generalization, and reflection, I have made me a principle. 
I have another principle which I did not create myself, but which came 
down to me out of a higher sphere. Gentlemen, admit my principles.” 

“Come [answer the pupils] review before us the series of operations 
by which you have arrived at your empirical principle; tell us what the 
certitude of the other rests upon.” 

“That is not the question, Gentlemen. Admit my principles.” 

“But we cannot reasonably admit them without knowing whether they 
are certain.” 

“Gentlemen, admit my principles, or there shall be no instruction for 
you; you shall not get my science.” 

“. . At any rate, it is sufficient for us to admit your principles as 
hypotheses.” 

“Gentlemen, one must 4e/ieve in the principle. What is necessary at 
this point is an act of frank adherence, an act of faith pure and simple; 
no reasoning, no discussion, no disputing.” 


™ Thid.. §§ 101-119. °° Thid.,. §§ 101-110. 


166 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


“But you had promised to lead us to faith by means of knowledge. 
It is no longer the time, you said,°* to impose the truth by authority. 
That was a bait, then, by which you were trying to allure us?” 

«« . , You have had faith in physical force and the mathematical 
point; otherwise there would have been for you neither physics nor 
geometry. Nevertheless the mathematical point is quite absurd, rationally 
speaking. One must therefore begin by Je/ieving in the principle of the 
science, however obscure, however mysterious it may be. Gentlemen, it 
is necessary to believe in my principle. . . . Gentleman, take my balm.”** 


There is just one thing about this burlesque which is really unfair. 
Bautain was willing to have his principles taken as hypotheses. 
The faith which he demanded of his auditors at the start was not 
the faith to which he hoped to lead them. It was no more than 
the adoption of a provisional assumption—a practise, as he points 
out, from which it is impossible to escape. 


And if someone should come and say to us that it does not befit the 
dignity of the philosopher to admit at the start, as a principle, a proposi- 
tion (parole) which he has not verified, we should reply that you must 
begin by admitting something, whatever school you belong to, and that 
no philosophical explanation will ever be possible without some datum, 
set up at the start, but destined to be justified by the explanation itself.*° 


We have said that the logic of the intelligence might best be 
termed “the logic of organism.” If we try to grasp the main 
philosophical appercu which underlies the eccentricities of Bautain’s 
logic, we shall in fact discover that it is the perception of the 
inadequacy of modern descriptive science, with its mechanistic and 
atomistic tendencies, to deal with living organisms. ‘The picture 
of multitudinous billiard-balls endlessly bumping one another in 
chains of mechanical cause and effect is quite a falsification of 
what goes on in every organism. It is not unnatural to conclude 
that a new type of logic is needed to deal with organisms: a logic 
wherein the cause grows, expands, evolves, in passing into the effect; 
a logic wherein each proposition is organically related to all the 
rest, and helps to prove the very propositions which help to prove 
it, as each organ in the body helps to sustain the organs which 
help to sustain it; a logic which, instead of crawling over the 


Ens. Phil. F., 76. Ens. Phil. F, 95. 
“Ens. Phil. B, 519-525. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 167 


surface of things with compass and dividers, boldly plunges to the 
heart of things, identifies itself with the life of things, and then 
looks toward its external starting-point through the very eyes of 
the phenomenon it is studying; which, finally, instead of trying 
to build the structure of metaphysics from the ground up, brick by 
brick, out of inferences from phenomena, boldly soars into the 
empyrean, and looking down upon phenomena from _heaven’s 
height, describes what it sees. 

If this seems fantastic—and all revolutionary proposals seem 
fantastic at first—let us remind ourselves that the philosophy of 
the last century has actually been based upon the principles here 
suggested. It has been dominated by the idea of evolution. When 
we want to explain anything, we tell its history, we treat it geneti- 
cally; we speak of the “evolution” of planetary systems and social 
institutions in the same breath, and our systematic philosophers, like 
Herbert Spencer, will make us a pat formula which applies equally 
to both. And where is the logical justification for such an evolu- 
tionary formula? Is it not as Bautain says? ‘You must follow 
it in its developments, in its consequences, in all its applications to 
the life of man and of nature; and this will give you the demon- 
stration or exposition of all that is in it, as the tree is known by 
its fruits.”°* Judged by this test of applicability to the facts, 
Bautain’s evolutionary formula—polarization in response to and 
in constant dependence upon external stimulation—is fully as 
worthy of respect as any that has been proposed. If it does violence 
to the facts of physics, Spencer’s formula does violence to all but 
physical phenomena, and Bergson’s formula, which, like Bautain’s, 
is drawn from the biological realm, does violence to the facts of 
biology themselves, in that the rdle of external stimuli is not 
sufficiently recognized. And might we not insist, with Bautain, 
that all of the evolutionary formulae of the century, from Fichte’s 
and Schelling’s to Spencer’s and Bergson’s, have been the product 
not of logical reasoning, but of intuition, of “intelligence”? 


3. Reason and faith: Bautain as a fideist. 
Bautain is most often referred to as a “fideist,”’ and his philosophy 


* Thid., 82, note. 


168 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 
goes by the name of “‘fideism.””’ ‘This is perfectly appropriate, for 
the priority of faith is perhaps the most characteristic of his 
teachings. He never tires of repeating that “in everything one 
' must begin by believing.” But fideism has become a heresy; and 
whenever a doctrine is pronounced heretical, there ensues a curious 
process of unconscious equivocation whereby the original doctrine 
is made much worse than it really was. Those who feel most 
sympathy with the doctrine in question proceed at once to distinguish 
their own position from the heretical position; and, in so doing, 
they caricature the heresy. This is what has happened in Bautain’s 
case. His doctrine of the priority of faith is no doubt vulnerable 
and open to criticism; but it is far more reasonable than it has 
been painted. By “faith” Bautain never meant fides implicita, 
“blind faith,” the credo quia absurdum of Tertullian. When con- 
trasting faith with reason, he always meant one of three things: 
willingness to make assumptions, receptivity, or dawning perception 
of truth. 


(1). Faith as willingness to make assumptions. 

We need make little comment on this first meaning of faith; 
for the Mennasian’s burlesque should have prepared us to understand 
it. Bautain’s whole logic is one long insistence upon the necessity 
for making assumptions, and proceeding upon unproven hypotheses. 
‘The axioms of rationality are not susceptible of rational proof; the 
fundamental principles of all the sciences are unproven; the exist- 
ence of the self must simply be accepted as a datum of experience, 
and the existence of God, the “absolute major premise” of all 
reasoning, cannot be proved by reasoning. Intelligence can see 
the validity of these assumptions, and their validity can then be 
exhibited in orderly fashion by the reason; but reason, as reason, 
must simply take them “on faith,” believing the affirmations of the 
intelligence, which it can neither prove nor disprove. _ 


” The “fideism” of Bautain and other independently of beliefs.” See his Pub- 


Catholic thinkers should be carefully dis- 
tinguished from the “fideism” of Eugéne 
Ménégoz, the friend and colleague of 
Auguste Sabatier, which consisted in the 
doctrine that man is saved “by faith, 


lications diverses sur le fidéisme, Paris, 
Fischbacher. The two fideisms have 
nothing in common but their anti-intel- 
lectualism. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 169 
(2). Faith as receptivity. 


To believe, in the most general sense [says Bautain], is simply to let 
in the truth, and react freely toward it; to believe is the essentially vital 
act of the human creature in his present state. . . . He is in relation, 
direct or indirect, with all the existences; he is susceptible, by virtue of 
his organization, of being affected by them; and is in fact so affected con- 
tinually. Their impressions stimulate his life-principle (vie) and stimu- 
late it to react; he admits them or rejects them. . . 


Having admitted an impression, experienced its impact, and reflected 
upon it, man has again the choice between harboring it or rejecting 
it. If he rejects it, it can obviously never develop into a clearly 
known idea or fact; if on the other hand he accepts it, the first 
step on the road to knowledge of the experienced object has been 
taken—and this is belief.*° ‘Belief involves the existence of a 
not-Self in active relation with the Self, and at the same time, 
the intus-susception of and reflection upon the received impression, 
in the Self.”*°° It includes three moments: In the first, “‘the 
object acting upon me, I feel the effect of its action.” In the 
second, “I pay attention to what I experience”—or I fail to. In 
the third, “reflection gives me the consciousness of what I experi- 
ence, the consciousness of the modification I am _ undergoing; 
whence results belief in the action of an object, and the knowledge 
of what that object is in relation to me.”?”* 


You see [he concludes] that knowledge is born of belief, and never 


precedes it: . . . nothing is more absurd, more contrary to the law of 
your mind, than the pretention to know, to judge, and to reason before 
believing. . . . It is clear that it is in default of knowledge and self- 


evidence that faith is necessary. But that does not mean that the évidence 
and the knowledge of metaphysical verities is impossible, and that faith 
must always substitute for them. It is the way that leads to them, and 
the way ends at the goal, where faith becomes self-evidence, knowledge, 
absolute certitude.’°” 


One might say that belief, in this sense, corresponds to the 
physiological act of .accepting food. If a bit of food is once 


® Phil. Chr., I, 293-295. Phi Chris 1; 1295: 
® Bautain usually restricts the word  Tbid., 296. 
foi to the religious field, and speaks of 102 Ibid., 296-297. 


croyance elsewhere. 


170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


accepted, and if the stomach does not rebel against it, it eventually 
gets worked up into bone and muscle; but the act of acceptance, 
depending on an instinctive perception of the fact that it meets 
the organism’s need, is the necessary condition of its assimilation. 
So an act of “adherence,” depending upon an instinctive perception 
of the truth of a proposition or the presence of a reality, is the 
necessary condition of the assimilation and eventual comprehension 
of each bit of knowledge. ‘This is why Descartes’ “systematic 
doubt” is so foolish: it cuts one off from so many possible sources 
of knowledge, not only from tradition and instruction and divine 
revelation but from the whole objective world. ‘The person who 
insisted on knowing before believing would be like a child who 
insisted on testing his mother’s milk before tasting it; he never 
would get to the point of knowing at all. The child’s mind de- 
velops only because he reacts affirmatively and trustfully to his 
parents’ solicitations, and the pupil progresses in knowledge only 
as he has confidence in his teacher. “It is necessary, then, in all 
things, to begin by believing; and faith is the first condition of 
all knowledge and all philosophy.”’*°* 


(3). Faith as dawning perception of truth. 

But faith is not merely the first condition of knowledge; it is 
already knowledge; for were it not for a dim and confused 
apprehension of the fact that “there is something here which I 
» there would be no means of deciding 
whether to accept or reject the supposed truth which is knocking 
for admission. Bautain often uses faith in this sense, as equivalent 
to dim perception of truth, a “taste” or “feeling” for the truth. 

We may best bring out this third meaning of faith by comparing 
faith with intelligence. Both are capable of getting us in cognitive 
touch with the world of ideas. But the idea, says Bautain, is 
sometimes “felt rather than seen”: 


ought to receive as true, 


j 
The superior light, which must produce it, descends into the depths 


of the soul and is absorbed there; and thus cannot be reflected in the 
intelligence, still insufficiently developed, and therefore incapable of 
conceiving the idea and embracing knowledge. There results what is 
called faith, which is the root of the idea, as the idea is the principle 


7 Mor. Ev. P., 57. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 171 


of knowledge, as knowledge is the basis of doctrine. But let one not 
be deceived: faith, obscure as it is on account of its depth, is intelligent; 
it is an intelligence penetrated by the action of the truth, but which is 
not yet conscious of itself and that which penetrates it; it is an unreflected 
and hence less brilliant light.1°4 


Indeed religious faith, as distinct from mere belief, is more 
intelligent than the intelligence! It relates one directly to a divine 
world of which the intelligence has only an inkling, as the reason 
has only an inkling of the intelligible world. In faith, we have 
a reaction of the soul to the stimulus of a rayon de Pinfini which 
springs from the very depths of infinite Being and pierces to the 
depths of man’s being. ‘The consciousness of the activity of this 
stimulating ray exists only in the soul; it escapes all the secondary 
faculties, which can neither understand nor control it. 


As the brook does not flow back toward its source, so the mind cannot 
turn back toward the psychic center from which it emanates; the move- 
ment of life carries it ever onward; and, when it reflectively considers 
its feeling and looks into its own depths, it inevitably produces an image 
which veils those depths by representing them.*°* 


But deep down below the mind, in the very depths of the soul, 
faith is apprehensive of truths which it can hardly explain to the 
mind. Faith alone clearly grasps the Christian idea of God, the 
idea of a Triune God of Love; the other faculties can seize it 
only in its refracted form, as the ideas of Sovereign Good, Uni- 
versal ‘Truth, and Absolute Beauty. Faith thus opens the eye of 
the soul to a Holy of Holies where Plato himself never penetrated. 

A question of particular interest, in view of the close parallel 
between Bautain’s theory of knowledge and what later came to be 
called Voluntarism or Pragmatism, is the question of the relation 
of faith to will. Here and there, one comes upon sentences in 
Bautain that seem to foreshadow the idea of the “‘will to believe.” 
For example, he points out that reason and intelligence, or “earthly 
> sometimes reach a deadlock which only the 
will can break. Reason, he says, 


and heavenly reason,’ 


cannot . . . be the judge, for it is implicated on both sides of the case. 


™4 Psych. Exp., I, 376-377. °° Phil. Mor., 1, 495. See also § 95. 


172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


As a matter of fact, it is never reason which does decide, although it 1s 
most often employed to proclaim and justify, like a clerk of the court 
drawing up the arrét after the judge’s sentence. The judge of last 
resort in man is the will, placed between two opposing worlds, and 
destined to give itself to the one or the other . . . to perform an act 
of liberty.?°° 


In every act of intellectual judgment, he says, the decision is 


due toa 


mysterious and innate taste which, from the bottom of our soul, responds 
spontaneously to all that acts upon it, which says either yes . . . or mo. 
. . . It is therefore not from the reason, properly speaking, but from 
the center of the human being, from that which is profoundest, most 
mysterious in man, that judgments come. ... It is his will which 
pronounces the yes or the mo; it alone exercises the sacred function of 
separator, judge, sacrificer.1°* 


The reader will note that, even in this form, Bautain is advocat- 
ing neither the wager of Pascal, nor Kantian postulation, nor a 
Pragmatic “‘venture of faith’”—sometimes described as a “leap in 
the dark.” The will decides, on Bautain’s theory, mot because 
practical exigencies demand a blind decision, but. because will is 
more intelligent than either reason or intelligence. But if we 
examine Bautain’s writings a little more carefully, we shall see 
that faith and will, though closely connected, are not identical. 
Faith lies even deeper than the will; it is a reaction of the un- 
differentiated soul or life-force. 


Thus [he says] although there is no faith without a certain adhesion of 

the will, the will is nevertheless not the mistress of faith; it can neither 

create it for itself nor stimulate the sentiments which accompany it, any 

more than it can root it out or destroy it. It comes sometimes in spite 

of a man, suddenly illuminating him, and all too often the guilty man 
. would like to rid himself of its importunate light, and cannot.?°8 


The will cannot determine faith; but faith can determine the 
will; it is the most powerful of all motives. It leads to action 
far more directly than other forms of knowledge; one will die 
for one’s faith sooner than for one’s clear convictions. 


1% Psych, Exp., 1, 217. Phil. Mor., 1, 494-495. Cf. Psych. 
1% Variétés, 41, Exp., II, 376. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 1/3 


We have dwelt upon the cognitive aspect of faith; but faith can 
no more be classified as an act of cognition than as an act of will 
or a stirring of the emotions. If it is any of these, it is all three. 
Bautain speaks of it sometimes as a sentiment, but again he speaks 
of the “sentiment which issues from it,” and declares that “it is 
‘Verein other 
words, it is a total reaction of the life-principle. If upon the one 
hand it is the beginning of knowledge, it is upon the other hand 
the beginning of love and adoration: 


at the same time a sentiment and a motive of action. 


Faith is the beginning of the union of the soul with God, a union 
whose consummation is love.’?° 

Adoration is the most eminently religious fact; it is the completion 
of the spiritual life, as faith is its beginning.*** 


With such an exalted conception of faith, Bautain very naturally 
expressed himself in sweeping terms, and roundly asserted that 
“faith precedes reason.” We may, in fact, distinguish six senses 
in which faith is prior to reason, according to Bautain: 

(1). Logically, faith is prior to reason; for reason is obliged 
to take all its axioms and major premises “on faith.” In every 
discussion the reason is obliged to start with principles and axioms 
which it has had to admit without proof.**” Faith is here taken 
in the first sense, as ‘“‘willingness to make assumptions.” 

(2). Psychologically, faith is prior to reason; for in each 
cognitive act, the stage of rational elaboration and reflection is 
preceded and made possible by a stage of vague knowledge or 
pressentiment (faith in the third sense), which in turn is preceded 
and conditioned by an act of intellectual hospitality (faith in the 
second sense) whereby the subject exposes itself to the influence 
of the object. 

(3). Genetically and historically, faith precedes reason; for 
the age of faith, both in the child and in the race, precedes the 
age of reason. 

(4). Metaphysically, faith is superior to reason, inasmuch as 
faith gets one in touch with ultimate reality, whereas reason is 
limited to the realm of phenomena. 


7 Cf. Phil. Mor., 1, 494, 496, 516. Mt Thid., 508. 
-° Phil. Mor., I, 493. 12 Avertissement, Q. 5. 


174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


(5). LEpistemologically, faith is more trustworthy, less liable 
to error, than reason, and carries with it greater certitude. We 
shall consider this point shortly, in connection with Bautain’s theory 
of truth and certitude. 

(6). Apologetically, as a rule, faith precedes reason, in that 
the unbeliever seldom is led to faith by disputation; on the con- 
trary, he reaches a rational conviction of the truth of religion only 
after he has opened his heart to the Word of the Gospel (faith 
in the second sense) and so has arrived at a dim conviction of its 
truth, which he can hardly explain to himself (faith in the third 
sense ). 

In spite of this sweeping assertion of the priority of faith over 
reason, Bautain is quite willing to grant that, in its place, reason 
is extremely important, and may even, in certain cases, “precede” 
faith. When truth has once been apprehended by faith, it needs 
to “eradiate in the sphere of the reason” in order to be under- 
stood; and all systematic instruction is rational. 


We have never meant [he says] to exclude reason from the considera- 
tion of metaphysical and moral truths; we have never wished to banish 
it either from philosophy or from theology. ‘Those who have cast re- 
proach against us have gratuitously ascribed to us an absurdity which is 
not of our making. It is perfectly evident that wherever man makes 
use of his powers of thought and of speech, the reason is exercised and 
applied. Now, how study philosophy or theology without thinking or 
speaking! It is very evident, again, that to receive teaching or be 
instructed, one must first be capable of understanding language, which 
is the necessary medium of instruction; and the reasonable being who 
makes use of his reason is the only one who can learn to understand 
speech and utter it. So it is beyond doubt that the exercise of the 
reason precedes all scientific teaching.1!® 


Again, when the Bishop asked him whether reason did not pre- 
cede faith “in the primary and fundamental questions,” Bautain 
was willing to admit that faith in the specifically religious sense 
of the word was possible only for a rational being. 


Yes, reason precedes faith. . . . The use of the reason is anterior to 


"3 Simple exposé, FB,H8 verso. Full prétres de son diocése. A very interest- 
title: Simple exposé de la question entre ing document. 
Mer. PEvéque de Strasbourg et plusieurs 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST by5 


faith in the order of time; for faith comes from the hearing . . . of 
the word, and the comprehension of the word is possible only through 
the reason.’'* 


Finally, Bautain is willing to admit that reason may precede 
faith, in that an unbeliever may be led to religious faith by rational 
arguments. ‘This is not the zormal order; “among true Christians 
one believes from the first.”**? But when a man has once drifted 
into skepticism, one may employ reasoning, in the first place, de- 
structively, to “make him know and recognize his needs, his 
wretchedness, his ignorance, the contradictions of his nature, the 
impossibility of solving by reason the problem of his existence’’;*** 
—in other words, one may attack reason with the weapons of 
reason—and then, constructively, one may show him what an ex- 
traordinary rational unity may be introduced into the whole body 
of human knowledge when the fundamental truths of religion 
are even provisionally adopted as the first principles of philosophy. 
Bautain’s whole philosophy is in fact a vast rationalization of 
Chnisstian theology; as his enemies put it: “that same reason so 
unjustly despoiled of her rights in the order of natural knowledge, 
comes and takes back the reins of empire in a higher order of 
things, and in fact finds herself proclaimed supreme judge in mat- 
ters of faith.”**7 It should be noted, however, that the sort of 
logic with which Bautain attempts to convert the unbeliever is 
always the “logic of the intelligence.” He never descends to the 
level of the unbeliever; he never attempts to prove his main con- 
victions. He simply asserts their truth, and then proceeds to show 
the glorious consequences which ensue when their truth is once 
assumed. 

Bautain’s maturest convictions on the question of faith and reason 
may be found in a manuscript essay dated 1846.*'* Here the act 
of cognition is analyzed into three moments: a “transitive” act 
of faith, which puts object and subject en rapport; an “identical” 
act of knowledge, in which the dim apprehension resulting from 
° and, finally, 


faith flares out, as it were, into blazing certitude;™ 


™4 Thid. ™8 De la Certitude, FB,V9, §§ 3-7. 
M5 Thid., Q. 4. " “The light was shining at first out- 
N86 Thid. side of us; we have let it in and now 


"7 Rapport a Vévégque, 13. it lights us up within.” 


176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


a “conjunctive” act of “reflection” or reasoning, “whereby the 
intelligence, by virtue of acquired knowledge, seeks to obtain from 
it new knowledge.” Reason, then, is a means of passing from 
truth to truth, from one cognitive act to another; but at the be- 
ginning of each act of cognition, an act of faith is necessary. Even 
at this late date, six years after signing the general recantation of 
1840, and two years after signing another very sweeping set of 
propositions,'*° Bautain is as firm as ever on this point—at least 
in his private reflections upon the subject. 


The conditio sine qua non of all knowledge of the truth is therefore 
expressed in the question, “Can you believe?” Whoever says yes, opens 
a way for himself to arrive at knowledge; whoever says no, isolates 
himself irrevocably from the truth. Faith is the bridge which leads 
from the subjective to the objective. . . . Faith thus has only a moment; 
but at the outset its necessity is absolute. . . . If man had the initiative 
of the vital movement in himself, he might be able to begin by knowing; 
but it is not so in the least. He must therefore believe first; he will 
know later: and, his acquired knowledge revealing to him better yet 
what he might know, . . . he will invoke it, seek it, attach himself to 
it again by belief and faith when he finds it.?7? 


4. Reason and revelation: Bautain as a traditionalist. 

In the history of religious thought, the great enemies of tradi- 
tionalism have been the mystics. “hey have had a perpetual tend- 
ency to appeal from the dogmas of the past to the soul’s immediate 
intuitions; and to dissolve all things historical into a timeless vision 
of Eternal Truth. What need have they to be ¢#o/d the truth, to 
be instructed in the traditions of men, to delve into musty books? 
They see the truth, and that is enough for them. Now, no one 
can possibly mistake the fact that Bautain is a mystic. As Pro- 
fessor Baudin remarks, a// the intuitionisms meet in his philosophy; 
Platonic intuition of the supersensible ideas, Malebranchian intui- 
tion of the idea of Being, psychological intuition of inward realities, 
moral and religious intuitions of the “heart”—and their common 
root is mysticism, the conviction that “everything puts us in im- 
mediate and personal communication with God, the Being of 

© As a preliminary to getting Papal Mt FB.V9, $3 5-7, 


approval for the Communauté de St.- 
Louis. See de Régny, 337-338. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 177 


Beings; that all our ideas come from Him, lead us back to Him, 
and finally leave us seuwls a seul in His presence.”**” How, then, 
is it possible for Bautain to be a traditionalist? It may sound 
paradoxical, but I think it can be maintained that his traditionalism 
is the logical outcome of his mysticism, and grows inevitably out 
of his peculiar theory of innate ideas. ‘To substantiate this thesis, 
we shall have to take a glance at his theory of revelation. 

We are dealing, remember, with a contemporary of Hugo and 
Lamartine, Schelling and the Schlegels, Emerson and Margaret 
Fuller. It was the hey-day of the Romantic epoch, when every 
artist was a genius, every philosopher was a seer, every reformer 
was a prophet, and all were “‘inspired.”” Let us not be surprised, 
then, to find that Bautain’s theory of revelation is essentially a 
theory of inspiration, and that he draws no sharp line between the 
natural inspiration of the poet or genius, and the supernatural 
inspiration of the prophet or apostle. 

A theory of revelation and inspiration is necessary, from Bau- 
tain’s point of view, because of the existence of ideas. Ideas are 
those fundamental principles and concepts which the reason can 
neither prove nor disprove, but which it must take for granted. 
They lie at the root of every science; and, as they descend in 
stately hierarchy from the Idea of Being, they bind all knowledge 
into a unified system even as God binds their prototypes, the /deals, 
into a unified system in His mind. Now, obviously, the reason 
never could have discovered the ideas; and yet they are current 
in human thought, and words which represent them are current in 
human language. How did they become current? Who dis- 
covered them? 


It is by the men of genius [says Bautain] prophets, poets, or apostles, 
as one will have to call them by reason of their more or less pure partici- 
pation in the spirit of God, that the life of heaven has been communicated 
to humanity since the beginning, and that this communication is main- 
tained and renewed across the centuries.1** 


The facts to which Bautain points to justify his belief in the 


2 Baudin, La philosophie de Louis Strasbourg, Nos. 1 and 2 (1921). 
Bautain, Rev. des sciences religieuses, Abbrev.: Baudin, II. 
8 Psych. Exp., U1, 406. 


178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


possibility of extraordinary revelations are those same facts which 
have in recent years given rise to the hypothesis of the subconscious: 
automatisms, sudden illuminations, visions, auditions, ecstasies. He 
assigns these mental states to what he calls “Transcendental 
Psychology”; since they cannot be experimentally (i. e., introspec- 
tively) studied. 


The characteristic of these states [he remarks] is precisely that in them 
man is caught away from the knowledge of himself, that he loses mo- 
mentarily what is called “presence of mind’ or self-consciousness, and 
thus all means of internal observation are thereby removed.*** 


Bautain’s theory is that all such phenomena are due to direct 
communication between the soul or intelligence and supersensible 
reality, without the use of the sense-organs. “Man,” he says, “‘as 
he appears to us, has, like all the existences belonging to the sphere 
we inhabit, a clear side and an obscure side.” What strikes the 
senses and is worked up by the reason belongs to the “clear” side; 
“what passes through the sieve of our organs without affecting 
them, what our senses cannot seize, what our reason cannot com- 
pare, we call obscure, dark, incomprehensible, metaphysical— 
expressions which are just about synonymous in present-day speech.” 

To the reason, of course, such supersensible perceptions are a 
stumbling-block. ‘““The reason of the learned calls these latter 
empty or mystic dreams, products of a disordered imagination, and 
rejects them with disdain. The reason of the ignorant and credu- 
lous cries ‘Prodigy!’ and sees in them an exception, a deviation, or 
suspension in what it calls the laws of the universe.” Bautain 
regards them “neither as prodigies nor as vain imaginations, but as 
realities which have their seat or basis in the original nature of 
man, and their cause in the relationship in which he stands to all 
that exists.” 

Since all Nature, all Reality, is organically related, whatever 
exists and whatever happens in any part of the Universe must cause 
at least some slight reverberation throughout the whole. “Irritable 
nerves sense all the mutations of the atmosphere beforehand. All 
the great upheavals of nature act mysteriously upon man before 
bursting out before his senses.” Such physical pressensations, as 


poof." ht me ERE 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST L719 


Bautain calls them, are hints of the possibility of spiritual pressenti- 
ments, which, like them, are felt only by unusually sensitive 
individuals. “The man of strong reasoning ability usually has an 
“energetic will in a robust body.” His very force of concentration, 
while it makes him capable of foresight based on observation and 
induction, shuts out “the multiplicity of impressions which trouble 
the reason and render the judgment uncertain or fickle.’ Im- 
pressions which are insensible to him may be sensible to a man of 
more nervous temperament: “Le faible pressent davantage, le fort 
présume et préjuge mieux.” Seers, poets, and prophets are simply 
unusually sensitive people, and their visions and mystic intuitions 
come to them at moments of unusual sensitivity. If the ideas they 
give to the world are divine ideas—as indeed their content often 
proves them to be—there is at any rate nothing incomprehensible 
about the method by which they get them.*” 

By what right, argues Bautain, shall a man deny the possibility 
of sensations, visions, auditions, etc., the like of which he has never 
experienced? ‘They may “appear marvelous because they are not 
ordinary or common,” but they may nevertheless be “the natural 
consequence of the habitual or accidental mode of being of the 
subject who experiences them,” and no more marvellous than the 
instinctive perceptions of animals, which no human being can share. 
A man has a right to say that a given vision or a given supersensible 
reality is not real for him; he has a right to say it is “opposed to 
common sense”’ to believe in it; but he has no right to pronounce 


it illusory, @ priori. 


For [says Bautain] he presupposes the belief that all that is possible is 
known to him and to the generality of men, or that vulgar comprehension 
is the measure of all that is and can be. And if our fathers had said 
as much, where would our modern discoveries be, and where were the 
use of all these researches and labors to exploit nature and discover new 
truths? 126 


Bautain is fully aware of the dangers that beset his position. 


To admit the possibility of visions, and consequently of apparitions, of 
extraordinary revelations, is it not [he asks] to open the door again to 


“® For all quotations in last two para- soci (°F fey ATER PA 
graphs, see Variétés, 21, 22, 26, 35-37. 


18 


180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


all the reveries of mysticism, to put weapons in the hands of fanaticism, 
to reaccredit all the superstitions of the Middle Age, to return at long 
strides toward obscurantism, and all that follows from it???" 


He admits the danger—in particular, the danger of mysticism of 
the Quietistic sort—but feels that there are at least equal dangers 
on the other side: ‘“‘our enlightened century, as we are pleased to 
call it, has also its superstitions; . . . reason itself is perhaps but 
a great superstition which it will some day be necessary to purify 
and rectify in its turn.”*** Moreover, if by “mysticism” is meant 
the belief in realities which transcend observation and reason, then 
science itself is full of mysticism, when it talks of forces, sub- 
stances, qualities, space, Nature, the mathematical point, and the 
like. To the empirical psychologist, it is “mysticism” to admit 
the existence of a self or soul, and yet a psychology without a 
soul is surely “quelque chose de trés mystique.’ The only philoso- 
phy which can escape the charge of mysticism is a thoroughgoing 
sensualism. In the eyes of Hume, both rationalists and idealists 
are mystics. In the eyes of rationalism, Platonism is mysticism— 
and so on. In other words, one escapes the charge of mysticism 
only by denying the existence of any reality behind phenomena.’™ 

All this simply goes to prove the possibility of revelation. ‘The 
fact is proved, on the one hand, by the existence of the ideas, which 
must have come from somewhere, and on the other hand, by the 
universality of revealed religions and by the testimony of the noble 
army of poets, prophets, geniuses, seers, and mystics, to whose awe- 
inspiring words the heart of man instinctively reacts with an 
acquiescent impulse. If ordinary men condemn the intuitions of 
the mystics on the basis of their experience, “is there not the 
experience of all these others to fight against theirs?”**° 

According to their degree of susceptibility to influences from 
the divine and intelligible worlds, men are divided into two great 
classes, les hommes de Pinfini and les hommes du fini. The second 
class, which is by far the larger, includes “those who have never 
felt the sentiment de Pinfini, who have never conceived the idea 
of it, and whose will has not been penetrated to its depths by the 
action of God.” 


17 Variétés, 32-33. ™ Mor. Ev. D., 156-166. 
18 Ibid. 18° Thid. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 181 


They have heard God spoken of, . . . but the word has struck the 
ear, and the virtue of the name has not touched the heart... . Hence 
they do not comprehend what they have not experienced, and all that 
can be said to them in this connection is for them an unknown language 
to which nothing real corresponds. . . . They are the hommes positifs 
of the world, men of sense, of reasoning, of self-interest, of calculation. 
... They esteem learning for its applications to every-day life; the 
physical and mechanical sciences are its apogee. . . . They judge the 
arts by the same measure; the ideal is an abstraction or a revery of 
cracked brains, it is the folly of artists. In a word, the taste for the 
finite and the gravitation of this earth animate these men.**" 


The other class, a small and select group, includes those whose 
“first free reaction” has been a reaction of faith and love toward 
the influences that stream down to them from the divine and 
intelligible worlds. 


Nothing terrestrial can satisfy them; they tend instinctively toward 
the infinite, seeking it by every path, and having no taste for what does 
not offer them its image; they feel, love, think differently from the 
others, who do not understand them and make fun of them. There is 
something vague, lofty, profound about them which gives them an air 
of mystery: they seem to be under the influence of a superior force. 
When they love, it is for eternity; for their desire does not stop with 
the limited object which meets their glance, but attaches itself to the 
ideal of which the reality is but a shadow. ‘Their thoughts have not 
the savor of the things of earth; but are dominated by the transcendent 
ideas whence they are derived; and their goal is beyond this world.1°? 


Great, then, is the historic réle of genius! 


These elite souls, when they obediently follow the celestial instincts 
which urge them, are called to do great things among men; for they are 
like reservoirs in which the divine influence is stored, into which the 
life of heaven flows, thence to pour itself out by divers channels upon 
humanity which it fecundates, upon the earth which it renews. ‘They 
are . . . mirrors reflecting the eternal Light, which reflect upon the 
world the warmth and brightness of heaven, augmenting the glory of 
the Sun of our Spirits, and the happiness of those It bathes with Its 
rays."°* ; 

It is the Idea which makes the world march, and when it is weighted 


31 Phil. Mor., 1, 525-526. 3 Psych. Exp. I, 393. 
ent (a1 RELA 


182 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


down under the form, oppressed by the letter, everything remains sta~ 
tionary, motionless, dead, in human affairs. But if there comes a new 
outpouring of the idea, the reanimated Spirit gets the upper hand; it 
breaks its shackles and bestirs itself to reach the new goal that it glimpses. 
That is why the vulgar always find something unaccustomed and strange 
in the genius. At first they make fun of him, then they wonder at him, 
when he sets to work, and at last they fear him, because he necessarily 
shakes so many established things, because he disturbs men’s interests and 
passions. . . . Humanity advances to its goal only by virtue of suffering 
and by a path of blood; genius and charity incessantly furnish victims 
for the great expiatory sacrifice which is to reconcile earth with heaven.1** 


But even the aristocracy of genius is not a homogeneous group. 
All are inspired in a sense, but there is a difference between the 
poet and the prophet, between the secular genius and the bearer of 
the divine Word. 

There are two principal avenues, says Bautain, by which human- 
ity has come into possession of ideas. ‘The first avenue is the 
“coup ad oeil or insight of genius.” “A single insight of this kind,” 
he observes, “gives great light to humanity, because it gives us an 
idea, and there is nothing more alive or more fruitful than the 
idea, for science as well as for conduct.” The other avenue is 
divine revelation in the strict sense. 


From the beginning and throughout the course of the ages, God has 
manifested himself to men. He has enlightened some of them with a 
supernatural light; he has revealed to them the universal truths without 
which society, science, and human life are impossible; and their task was 
to announce them to their fellows. ‘These chosen men have thus been 
prophets or apostles; and, like the men of genius who have been able to 
seize certain of these truths by intellectual intuition, they have said 
simply, positively, dogmatically, what they have seen or heard... . 
These are the two principal means by which, in all times, men have been 
able to arrive at the idea; and it is a great boon, when these two means 
codperate for the same end, the greatest possible manifestation of the 
truth, like two mirrors which augment the brilliancy of the light by 
reciprocal reflection.?*° 


Psychologically, it is a bit difficult to define the exact difference 
between these two types of inspiration. Both are characterized by 
the involuntary, automatic, unexpected, unreflective nature of the 


™ Psych. Exp., I, 406-407. bids 3, 1102-105: 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 183 


experience. As Bautain describes the three stages in the inspiration 
of the genius—zi/lumination, when the “superior light” floods in 
upon the soul; conception, when the light is welcomed in, and the 
idea is conceived; inspiration proper, which “presses him to realize 
what he has conceived,” and keeps him in agony till the idea is 
brought to birth—one can hardly imagine in what different terms 
he would describe prophetic inspiration.*°° Nor is it easy to see 
any absolute psychological distinction between the secular inspiration 
of the genius and the types of divine revelation which Bautain 
enumerates: “‘illuminations on the mysteries, flashes of light in the 
midst of contemplation, the manifestation of divine ideas, the sense 
of truth opening itself in the apostles, in the doctors of the Church, 
insights, ecstasies, ravishments of holy souls,” and, finally, revela- 
tions “through deep feeling and in the will,” which manifest 
themselves in “those supernatural moments which take the soul out 
of itself, render it capable of sacrificial love, inflame its zeal, re- 
double its courage.”**’ If there is anything in this list which 
clearly transcends the capacity of the secular genius, it is, apparently, 
this last type of inspiration; and that, perhaps, makes possible a. 
certain psychological distinction: genius and prophet have exactly 
similar intuitions of the intelligence; but the prophet has, in addi- 
tion, what might be called intuitions of the soul, which, though 
they are less clear and luminous than the intuitions of the intelli- 
gence, are much more profound. ‘The genius sees clearly; but 
sight only reaches surfaces. “The prophet and mystic feel or taste 
obscurely; but they are in touch with ultimate reality. In their 
experience, that which is deepest in man, the will, meets that 
which is deepest in reality, God’s Will, in an ineffable union of 
love. 

It would appear, then, that revelation, as Bautain conceives it, 
is nothing external to the usual processes of cognition, but simply 
a widening of them, in the cases of persons of exceptional sensi- 
tivity and responsiveness. Its source is external, of course, in the 
divine will to communicate the truth to man, and in the divine 
light or Word which makes superior knowledge possible. As the 
presence of the eye and the physical object are not enough to pro- 
duce knowledge without physical light as a medium, so the presence 


8° Thid.. II, 404-407. *7 Cerc. Cath., 45. 


184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


of the intelligence and the intelligible object are not enough with- 
out “the intelligible Light” as a medium.*** But, says Bautain, 
“External revelation, the Word, is a necessary but incomplete 
means of communicating to us the knowledge of God. Some- 
thing more is necessary; we must feel the inward action of the 
divinity. “Then there is no more doubt, but inmost conviction and 
profound certitude.” 

The distinction between the Light and the Word is worth dwell- 
ing on, for it reveals the link between Revelation and Tradition 
in Bautain’s thinking. As Revelation takes place in the mind of 
the genius or prophet, it is Light. ‘The genius who sees has the 
unshakable certitude of what he sees.’’*° But if that Light is to 
pass over into the minds of other men, it must pass through the 
medium of language: “if the eye is the organ of the immediate 
perception of light, the ear receives it mediately.”*** The Light 
then cloaks itself in the Word: 


He announces it; he says to men, “‘Here is the truth”; and when he 
_demonstrates it, it is by the knowledge he deduces from the idea, or by 
the masterpiece which gives the idea its form. But, before this demon- 
stration, he can announce it only by the word, and his word carries in it 
its light and its virtue. Some receive it and see by it, because they be- 
heve the genius; others understand only after the proof by works; others, 
finally, never comprehend,’*? 


The truth then, is self-evident when first revealed to the genius, 
and again self-evident when it is accepted and tested by the common 
man. As it comes to the common man in the shape of tradition, 
it commends itself by its external authority; but, except for the 
spiritually crippled, the truth will eventually come to shine by its 
own unreflected light. 


The final limit of all discussion is évidence.‘** Evidence is the judge 
of every controversy. There are men who do not have it and cannot have 


it, who are deprived of the organ of évidence; it is their misfortune.1*4 


Up to this point, Bautain’s theory of revelation has been a clear 


nee Phil. Chr., Letter 16. M2 Psych. Exp., I, 311. 
ae Ens. Phil. B., 598. “8 T know of no translation of évidence 
Psych, Exp., I, 311. less clumsy than “self-evidentness.” 


“! Phil. Chr., loc. cit. “ Ens. Phil. B., 599. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 185 


and consistent mysticism or illuminism, not so very different from 
that of Emerson and other Transcendentalist and Romanticist 
writers. Verbal tradition enters into the scheme only to convey 
the mystic light from the inspired genius to’ posterity; the Light 
precedes the Word. But when Bautain comes to trace the history 
of Revelation, and the stages in its development, we suddenly feel 
ourselves in a totally different atmosphere, and the Bonaldian in- 
fluence is clear. 

The principle of recapitulation, in which Bautain believes pro- 
foundly, demands that the evolution of revealed ‘Truth in the race 
shall be precisely parallel to the evolution of revealed Truth in 
the individual. Now, no man is born a full-fledged prophet or 
genius. He begins by assimilating truth that is handed down to 
him by tradition, by the Word. It is only later on, as he ponders 
upon the Word, that the Light begins to dawn. “The man who 
grows up apart from tradition and society never develops intelli- 
gence. Accordingly, it seems impossible to Bautain that the first 
men can have been such an enlightened race of geniuses as de 
Maistre, for example, describes. “They must have been children, 
needing to be taught by the Word, as children are taught. This 
is the reasoning which lies back of Bautain’s acceptance of the 
Bonaldian theory of a verbal primitive revelation: 


It must have been so, for the divine Word is the first condition of the 
intellectual and moral development of mankind. . . . Hence the first 
man had to have a teacher; he had to be spoken to, that he might speak; 
it is God, says the Scripture, who first spoke to Adam.**° 


This seems in part to reverse the relations of tradition and mystic 
illumination. ‘The original body of revelation was not luminous 
at all; it was given to man as hearsay knowledge. ‘The patriarchs, 
too, were instructed by the Word, and were far from understand- 
ing what they obediently passed on. ‘Then came the stage of the 
written Jaw. It was only with the prophets that the Light began 
to dawn which at last broke forth triumphantly in Christ, to be 
forever perpetuated through the illumining gifts of the Holy 
Spirit, working in the Church. ‘Thus, after all, tradition precedes. 
inspiration, as faith precedes knowledge.**® 


8 Cerc. Cath., 46-47. Mee bid. SIX, 


186 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The Bonaldian theory of language certainly introduced much 
confusion into Bautain’s philosophy, and one wishes he had never 
accepted it, for he never properly harmonized it with the rest of 
his thinking. It was one of the merits of Gratry to ignore the 
Bonaldian element in his master’s philosophy; whereby he achieved 
a far more consistent system than Bautain ever did. It should be 
noted, however, that, even in his worst moments, Bautain never 
makes Revelation a purely mechanical and verbal process. “The 
faith which accepts the Word is never a blind faith; for Bautain, 
unlike de Bonald, believes every normal individual has an innate 
capacity to recognize the Truth, or at least to “‘taste” it, when it 
is presented to him. All but the spiritually deficient or morally 
perverse are capable of testing the truth of religious tradition for 
themselves. To that extent, Bautain’s traditionalism is more 
democratic than de Bonald’s, while, on the other hand, it is much 
more aristocratic than Lamennais’s; for Bautain, unlike Lamennais, 
is not willing to grant to all men an equal spiritual capacity, or 
trust to a majority vote in matters of theology. Catholicism, he 
Insists, can never accept “common consent” as the criterion of 
Its truth: 


To the eye of true faith, of that living faith to which divine Light 
alone can give birth in the soul, the testimony of men, however numerous 
they may be, is not worth one single divine testimony, as all human 
reasonings are nothing before a manifestation of the Spirit of God.147 


The real inner consistency between Bautain’s traditionalism and 
his intuitionism has never been properly grasped. One of the most 
intelligent of his critics, Ferraz, complains that Bautain’s tradition- 
alism simply destroys his intuitionism. 


One would suppose, to listen to Bautain, that God cannot act directly 
(seul) and inwardly upon us, and that, in order to speak effectively to 
our inner ear, He needs to have some one speak to us at the same time 
from the outside. It is the ancient doctrine of the Logos and the Majitre 
intérieur ruined by the recent theory of language; it is Platonism and 
Augustinianism alloyed with Bonaldism.?48 


™ Letter on Common Sense, Rev. Eur., 8 Ferraz, op. cit., 338. 
VI, 656. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 187 


Now, Ferraz has detected the historical antecedents of Bautain’s 
theory with admirable perspicacity; but he has utterly failed to 
understand the theory itself. Bautain’s whole theory of revelation 
is based upon the possibility of direct and immediate communication 
between what is inmost in man and what is inmost in Reality. He 
objects strenuously to any form of traditionalism which, like 
Lamennais’s “‘incessantly interposing a human authority between 
man and the facts, shuts him off from access to them.’”’* He 
addresses his teaching precisely to those who “wish évidence and not 
authority, who wish to see the truth for themselves and not receive 
it on the testimony of another.”*°° He emphasizes the importance 
of language and tradition for just two reasons: first, because the 
individual’s powers of cognition develop only in society, by contact 
with the social concepts embodied in language; and secondly, be- 
cause men’s cognitive powers are not equally developed, so that 
the average man must bow to the superior insight of genius. Both 
of these reasons carry us back once more to Bautain’s general 
formula for the life-process; for they remind us once more that 
each individual creature develops his capacities only when he exposes 
himself to the stimulating influence of other creatures in a more 
advanced stage of development. Man is an étre enseigné; if he 
refuses to avail himself of the experience of his predecessors, he 
will never be wise; if he is unwilling to see through the eyes of 
those who see more clearly than himself, he will never learn to 
see for himself at all; if he will know God directly, he must 
first know Him indirectly. 

All this, as we said at the start, is of a piece with Bautain’s 
theory of innate ideas. If Bautain had maintained the tabula rasa 
theory of the infant mind, he might have been led (like de Bonald) 
to a purely externalistic and mechanical theory of revelation. If, 
on the other hand, he had maintained that the child possesses certain 
ideas, full-fledged, prior to all experience, he could not have been 
a traditionalist at all. But since he maintained a more reasonable 
theory than either of these—the theory, namely, that the child is 
born with certain innate capacities, which develop only through 
social intercourse—he was led to assign to tradition a most impor- 
tant role, which nevertheless is transitory: the role of the peda- 


“Ens. Phil. F., \wii et seg. © Tbid., \xii. 


188 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


gogue, who stands between the child and the facts not to conceal 
but to reveal, and who steps aside when mediation is no longer 


necessary. 


What then is the final upshot of Bautain’s critique of the reason? 
To answer that question, we shall need to distinguish between 
several different senses in which Bautain uses the word “reason.” 
He is, in fact, not altogether clear or consistent in his terminology 
at this point; and this was undoubtedly one reason why his con- 
troversy with the Bishop got nowhere. 


(1). Reason as equivalent to reasoning. 

This definition was forced upon Bautain by the Bishop’s first 
question: “Do you think that reasoning alone is not sufficient to 
prove with certitude the existence of the Creator, and the infinity 
of his perfections:” Understanding this in the light of his 
psychology, Bautain of course returned an emphatic negative. 
How, for a fact, can the reasoning process “alone” establish any- 
thing at all, if it is true, as Bautain insists, that the reasoning 
process rests back upon the judging process and the conceiving 
process, which in turn rest back upon the data furnished by the 
senses? Contact with reality must precede the reasoning process, 
if knowledge is to be gained through it. Logic alone, working 
in vacuo, has nothing cognitive about it. ‘‘Reason alone, by reason- 
ing alone’”—that is, induction and deduction divorced from per- 
ception and judgment—how could reason, so defined, be conceived 
to establish the existence of anything? Logic is not an existential 
science; the syllogism is not an instrument of discovery. It is 
like the carpenter’s square, an “instrument for verifying the cor- 
rectness of a construction already made.” 


The use of the square presupposes plan, law, and materials; the use of 
the syllogism presupposes the axiom, and fully formed images, concepts, 
and notions. ‘The square gives neither plan nor materials; the syllogism 
gives neither idea nor concept of any reality, nor the objectivity of what 
exists in nature outside of the mind. Both simply show the just or false 
relations between two positions or propositions set over against each other, 
or following one from the other.*51 


1 Variétés, 16. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 189 


(2). Reason as equivalent to discursive thought, or reasoning 
applied to the data of the five senses. 

This is the definition which the Mennaisian critic accepts as a 
basis of discussion. 


By reason, M. Bautain understands that active faculty by which we 
combine ideas, think, judge, reason, make abstractions, and generalize. 
We adopt that word, in a much broader sense, for the faculty of knowing, 
the intelligence under all its forms, whether M. Bautain calls it mind, 
understanding, reason, or intelligence.” 


Most of Bautain’s opponents probably supposed him to be attack- 
ing reason in this broader sense when he was really attacking only 
discursive reason. His distinction between intelligence and reason 
passed unobserved. As we have seen, his critique of discursive 
reason insists upon its incurable tendency to reduce concrete and 
organic reality to a series of disconnected abstractions. Kant’s 
judgment of it was quite correct; it is a purely phenomenal and 
subjective faculty, and its views of reality are simply convenient 
points of view. 


The legitimate sovereignty of the reason does not therefore extend 
beyond its own horizon, beyond its own limits, or the ideal world it 
creates for itself, by means of the materials it receives from without. 
Its empire is subjective, and in no wise objective. It has no more right 
to command another reason than it has to command nature.’** 


If, therefore, we can escape from the phenomenal world, it is 
only by virtue of a superior faculty, the intelligence, which seizes 
at a glance the genetic order and nature of things. Unless reason 
accepts all its major premises, with unquestioning docility, on the 
authority of this higher faculty, it always goes astray. 


(3). Reason as equivalent to mind. 

The two definitions already given are the only ones which 
Bautain commonly employs. He is accustomed to slip back and 
forth between them, in a somewhat disconcerting manner, as the 
exigencies of the argument require. But it will help us to com- 
plete our summary of his critique of the reason if we temporarily 


w Ens. Phil. B., 482. "8 Variétés, 14. 


190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


adopt the Mennaisian’s definition of reason, as equivalent to mind 
in the most general sense, including sensation, conception, judgment, 
reasoning, and intelligence. Supposing that the Bishop had asked 
Bautain whether “reason alone,” so defined, was capable of proving 
the existence of God and the infinitude of His perfections, what 
would have been his reply? I have not the slightest doubt that 
he would still have replied in the negative; for in his view even 
the intelligence is not man’s highest cognitive faculty. Mind is 
but a secondary function of the will or the soul; and if the 
intelligence is cognizant of the existence of God, it is not capable 
of plumbing the depths of His nature and the “infinitude of His 
perfections.” Only by faith, by the soul’s loving reaction to the 
Eternal Love, is the true God known; the ‘‘God” who lies at the 
end of a rational argument is an empty abstraction, and even the 
God of Plato, intuitively grasped by the insight of genius, is a cold 
Ideal. Yes, in another sense, even the soul, “‘alone,” cannot know 
God. “Alone,” man is helpless. Take him apart from his en- 
vironment, apart from society, apart from Nature, apart from the 
stimulating influences which God rains down upon him continually, 
and, just in proportion as he relies upon his own “absolute spon- 
taneity” and shuts himself up to these external stimuli, he becomes 
incapable of real knowledge. 

‘To sum up: neither reasoning “alone,” nor discursive thought 
‘“falone,” nor mind “‘alone,”? nor the whole soul of man, so far as 
it remains “alone,” can know or do anything at all. The preten- 
sion to independence and autonomy is folly; the path to true 
knowledge is the path of dependence, of receptivity, of faith and 
docility. ‘This is the central idea of Bautain’s philosophy; is it 
any wonder that the Bishop’s question aroused his ire? 


r¢ 


II 
BAUTAIN’s THEORY OF TRUTH AND CERTITUDE: 
His SEMI-PRAGMATISM 


It was Lamennais who had made the subject of “certitude” the 
storm center of philosophical discussion among French Catholics. 
‘The acrimoniousness of the discussion was in part due to a con- 
fusion of terms. To say that the common consent of mankind 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 191 


was the “criterion of certitude” might mean either that it was the 
best and most certain test of objective truth, or that it gave the 
greatest subjective feeling of certitude. Lamennais believed him- 
self to be proving the former when he was only proving the latter. 

Bautain, while not always free from a similar confusion of 
terms, at least made a conscious effort to avoid it. ‘“‘Certitude,” 
as he defines it, “‘is absolutely subjective”; it is “the end and final 
outcome of all logical operations,”*** a “firm assurance that we 
have the truth,” a state of “calm and full security” ensuing upon 
a period of action and reaction between “truth” and “the intelli- 
gence.”**® It is, to be sure, a state which cannot be defined with- 
out including “‘the clear consciousness . . . that it is really the 
truth to which we are attached, and that we run no risk of de- 
ceiving ourselves”;*°® but, when speaking of certitude in the ob- 
jective sense, Bautain usually prefers to speak of “truth.” We 
may therefore divide our discussion of his theory of truth into 
three main sections: the meaning of truth; the psychology of 
certitude; and the criterion of truth. 


1. The meaning of truth. 

What is truth? Does it exist independently of man’s mind, 
or does it not? One might expect Bautain to be a relativist, for in 
his method of testing truth, as we shall see in a moment, he is very 
much of a pragmatist; but we cannot too strongly emphasize the 
fact that in his theory of the mature of truth he has not the slightest 
tincture of pragmatic relativism. Like Professor Royce, he might 
call himself an “absolute” pragmatist. Though he holds truth to 
be found through the will, and tested by its practical consequences, 
he nevertheless insists that truth is really found, and not made. 

In defining truth, one is first faced with the problem of differ- 
entiating “truth” from “being” or “reality.” “Can one legiti- 
mately identify reality with truth,” asks Bautain, “‘and affirm 
purely and simply that what is, is true?”*°’ Obviously not, for 
truth implies relation of being with intelligence, as light implies 
relation of the luminous object with a seeing eye; and truth would 


4 Ens. Phil. B., 608. 7 FB,V9, Sur la Verité. All the fol- 
5 FB,V9, §§ 1 and 2, De la Certitude. lowing quotations are from the same 
Ibid. source. The essay is brief; and I have 


reproduced the whole of it, in substance. 


192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


as surely cease to exist, if intelligence vanished, as light would, if 
all the existences on the globe were blind. Reality apart from its 
relation to intelligent beings can no more be called true than reality 
apart from its relation to beings endowed with “taste” and “‘feel- 
ing” can be called good. “Being, the true, and the good, are 
identical in substance, but different in their relation.” | 

But this does not mean that truth exists only in men’s minds! 


All truth is . . . independent of the caprices and imaginations of 
man, superior to the arbitrary combinations of the reason; and it is a 
fatal mistake to believe that one cannot find truth except in human 


speech or thought. 


It is the divine intelligence which gives things their truth, as it 
originally gave them their reality: ““The different existences in 
their diverse relations are like the words and propositions of a 
sublime discourse pronounced by God.” Every reality corresponds 
to a thought in God’s mind, which “makes it what it is”; and its 
truth in this higher sense, is its degree of correspondence with the 
divine ideal. When things become evil they become “false” in 
this sense. 


What really is, has therefore more truth than a logical proposition can 
have, and the truth of the thought as it faces the reality can only be 
conceived as truth by participation. 


‘The phenomenal world which lies between the divine intelligence 
and the human intelligence thus has “truth” in different senses by 
virtue of its double relation to mind. Bautain compares it to “a 
magnificent edifice, whose plan was traced by a skilful architect, 
and which others later come to admire and study to comprehend its 
ensemble, its ordonnance, its purpose, its proportions,” or to “a stone 
chiselled by an artist, which leaves its imprint upon all sorts of 
materials,” by looking at which one can “understand the thought 


which inspired the artist at the moment when he was handling 
the chisel.” 


It is pure idea at the beginning [he says] in the architect or the artist; 
it is again idea in those who contemplate the imprints or the edifice: 
between these two ideas stands the reality, which takes its origin from 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 193 


the first, which gives birth to the second. Its relation to the first is 


necessary; that is, it exists only by and for that idea... . Its relation 
to the second is fortuitous and accidental; that is, it subsists and remains 
the same whether it is understood or is not understood. . . . Thus sub- 


stantial, ideal, real, logical, and spoken truth are the five degrees of the 
manifestation of the true, or the revelations in the order of nature of 


the absolute Truth who is God. 


Substantial truth is God’s self-knowledge; with Him, at least, 
reality and truth, knower and known, are one. Ideal truth is the 
perfect correspondence between the ideal world and the divine 
Mind; real truth is the degree of correspondence between the 
objects of the phenomenal world and the divine ideals which they 
ought to copy. Logical truth is measured by the degree of corre- 
spondence between man’s thought and the phenomena it attempts 
to describe; spoken truth, finally, is measured by the degree of 
correspondence between man’s speech and his thought. 


2. The psychology of certitude. 

How can mere mortals ever be certaim that their copies of objec- 
tive truth are correct? Is it not almost inexplicable that certitude, 
as a psychological state, should exist at all? Yes, says Bautain, it 
is very strange; and we shall never understand it unless we admit 
that man has something within him which he uses as an infallible 
criterion of truth. 

What is this subjective “principle of certitude”? It is, says 
Bautain, “the need which man ‘has of the truth, of ight, without 
7188 This need is at once 
practical and theoretical, and so when it feels itself satisfied, the 
certitude which expresses this satisfaction is at once practical and 
theoretical: “‘a conviction carried to the point of excluding doubt 
entirely and compelling at once the complete adherence of the mind 
and the firm assent of the will.”*” A certitude which one is not 
ready to live by and die for is no true certitude. From the sub- 
jective point of view, then, truth is what satisfies my eed of truth, 


which he cannot live a truly human life. 


the need which shows itself in “the instinct for knowledge or 
curiosity, innate in man.”*®° 


The subjective principle of certitude is at the same time very 


18 Ens. Phil. B., 609. wer Tid: 1 Thid., 609-610. 


194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


peremptory in its authority for the individual, and very inadequate 
as a social authority, for it is inward and indescribable. 


This principle is the most positive and certain thing in you; it is the 
condition of all your knowledge, the condition even of your existence, 
as a reasonable creature. . . . The principle of certitude and certitude 
itself are within you; they are subjective; no one can be certain for you, 
any more than you can impose your certitude on another. What answers 
to this principle, what provokes its development, is the’ truths) 1a ttane 
always the true outside of you, answering to the need of the true within 
you. It is the principle of certitude innate in each man, which . . . has 
its seat in the soul, in the very root of our existence. It is imprinted 
upon us as a divine stamp, as a permanent testimony, as the soul of the 
truth; it is the living and incontestable proof of the intimate relation in 
which man stands to the truth; for, how should he beg for it if he did 
not feel the need of it? How should he recognize it? How should 
he say “That is true!” if he had not within him the prototype of the 
truths 764 


Perhaps the nature of this mysterious principle may become 
plainer if we follow Bautain’s account of the relation between 
faith and certitude. It is by virtue of the presence of this innate 
principle, he says, that the initial act of belief which welcomes the 
truth from afar off is possible. 


It is in no wise through lack of certitude that man is obliged to believe; 
it is on the contrary by virtue of the principle of certitude which is 
innate in him that he feels the need of believing, has the power to believe, 
is predisposed to believe, and does believe.1®? 


On the other hand, certitude never becomes complete while 
faith wavers. 


Positive certitude, developed and determined, always varies with the 
degree of adhesion to the interior or exterior word, the degree of 
conscience intime and faith. . . . Thus it is that certitude is at once the 


foundation and the perfection, the first principle and the crown of 
taith.s"* 


Apparently, the principle of certitude lies even deeper in the 
soul than does faith itself—and that is very deep indeed! 





1% Phil. Chr., 1, 297-298. 8 Thid., 299. 
18 Tbid., 297. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 195 


In his epistemological works Bautain does not make plain the 
exact nature of that “‘need”’ to which the truth is the complement. 
He speaks of “innate ideas,” potential in the understanding, waiting 
to be fertilized by contact with the ideals of which they are the 
imprints, and of which the fully developed ideas are the copies; 
and we may presume that these innate ideas are a part, or aspect, 
or outcropping, of the “principle of certitude.” But we must go 
to his “Moral Philosophy” to discover the real secret. “There, in 
an eloquent passage, he speaks of the besoin radical of the will, 
which only the Infinite can satisfy, and which proves that the 
Infinite has formed it for Itself. 

In the chain of Creation, each creature “draws its nourishment 
from the order of things with which it is most clearly connected, 
or from the element from which it springs.” If, therefore, we 
know that for which the creature hungers, we know whence it is 
sprung. Now the soul of man, as well as his body, has an insatiable 
hunger for nourishment—the will is that hunger***—and nothing 
finite can satisfy it. Ennui results when it tries to feed upon the 
finite; it “gnaws and devours the mind, as inanition undermines 
and consumes the body.”** 


All the desires of man aspire, therefore, toward the infinite by some 
path, by some means of art, of knowledge, of justice, of piety, of love. 
If then the soul can live upon nothing but the infinite, if the infinite 
alone can satisfy her and sate her hunger, it is because it is analogous to 
her nature, it is because it is her principium, and that is why she naturally 
tends to return to it.7®® 


God is the only food that can satisfy the soul; and whenever a 
durable satisfaction comes to man in this world it is because he has 
found some reflection of the divine Beauty, some fragment of the 
divine Truth, some hint of the divine Goodness. 

Since the will is “the natural chief of our faculties,” since “we 
think because we wish to think,””**’ the satisfaction that accompanies 
all contact with the divine is primarily a satisfaction of the will; 
but this satisfaction has an intellectual as well as a moral import. 


pumsstcasecer.. J, 47. “Elle. [la * Tbid., 1, 61. See the whole passage, 
volonté] est la faim de létre et de la * Phil. Mor., I, 58-59. 
vie.” ee dar rb RCW 


14 


196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


By the will, man “‘communicates with the very source of his being, 
receiving by that avenue impressions, inspirations, impulses, often 
inexplicable to the reason, and which justify themselves only by 
the event.”*** ‘The satisfaction of the need of the mind which 
proves the presence of Truth is hardly to be distinguished at its 
source from the satisfaction of the will which proves the presence 
of the Good; both blend in the soul’s satisfaction, which proves 
the presence of its celestial Mate. Moral conscience and intel- 
lectual conscience (the principle of certitude) are one and the same 
thing. ‘The innate ideas themselves would seem to be a sort of 
soul-hunger, which only their proper nutriment can sate. The 
more an idea satisfies my desires, the more certain I] feel of its 
truth. 

If the soul’s desire is the subjective factor which contributes to 
produce the feeling of certitude, the objective factor is simply the 
object of cognition itself. “he degree of certitude, accordingly, 
varies with the nature of the object with which the soul is in 
commerce. Physical certitude results when physical phenomena 
impinge, as it were, upon the retina of. the soul, and is based on 
“the consciousness of the effects that these phenomena produce in 
us or upon us.” It is a low order of certitude, since physical 
phenomena have only a low grade of reality, and satisfy the soul’s 
hunger only temporarily. Metaphysical certitude, on the other 
hand, is perfect certitude, since it is based on the union of the 
soul with ultimate realities, which completely satisfy its hunger. 
Rational certitude, which results from the soul’s commerce with 
other human beings, and is reached either by weighing evidence 
or by heeding the authority of others, would, one might suppose, 
rank midway between physical and metaphysical certitude; but in- 
stead, it ranks below them. ‘That is because certitude varies with 
another factor, the factor of zmmediacy. It is greatest when the 
subject is face to face with the object, in a relation of action and 
reaction. Rational knowledge is at best second-hand knowledge, 
experience reflected-upon, and the testimony of others is third-hand 
knowledge. It is for this reason that Lamennais’s “common con- 
sent” is such an extraordinarily poor “criterion of certitude.” 
Whether a physical or a metaphysical object is in question, one 


%8 Phil. Mor., 1, 54. 1® Phil. Chr., I, 300. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 197 


moment of direct experience of the object will do more to convince 
me of its reality than all the testimony in the world: 


“The whole of mankind,” said M. Bautain ew pleine séance, “might 
come and afhrm to me that my conviction, my certitude, was false. I 
should not give in. My certitude is certitude, and nothing can shake it; 
no testimony can either produce or destroy that profound conviction 
which constitutes certitude. Would it follow that the whole human 
species was mad? . . . (No answer to this question except a gesture of 
ignorance or resignation). But, if 7 am mad, what good will the testi- 
mony of mankind do me? ”??° 


3. The criterion of truth: Bautain and William James. 

So far, we have been dealing with certitude as a mental state. 
We have indeed discovered that it varies with the degree of objec- 
tive Truth which the object under consideration embodies; but can 
we say that the converse is true, and that the accuracy of a propo- 
sition varies strictly in proportion to the degree of confidence it 
inspires in me? 

Well, Bautain comes pretty near to saying just that. His ulti- 
mate criterion of the truth is the inward testimony of the innate 
sense for the truth, which he calls sometimes the sens intime, some- 
times the “conscience,” sometimes the ‘‘need to believe,” and some- 
times “common sense,” (in conscious contrast with Lamennais’s 
“common sense,” which meant common consent). All men have 
this sense; those in whom it is not developed, miss the truth; those 
in whom it is developed—or rather developing, for truth-seeking is 
a never-ending process—find the truth just in proportion to their 
degree of development. 


A fatal error of M. de Lamennais and of many other philosophers 
[says Bautain] is to believe that there is a criterion of Truth so clear, 
infallible, universal, that one has only to present it, and all men will 
be forced to admit it. Such is not the way of things. God has made 
men free, and in all that they knowingly do, their will has its part. No 
one can be forced to believe, or to admit a given truth.” 


In other words, every man has his own criterion of truth; “man 


™° Ens. Phil. B., 610-611. On physi- Essay de la Certitude, FB,V9. 
cal, metaphysical, and rational certitude, *7 Letter to the Abbé Freschard, FB,K, 
see Phil. Chr., I, Letter 21, andthe Cahier I, 1-2. 


198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


is the measure of all things.” Does this reduce us to relativism?! 
No, for the Truth is unchangeable, and every man has a soul- 
hunger which only the Truth will satisfy; but it is only gradually 
that a man learns what it is that he wants. Error sours eventually 
on every man’s stomach; but it is only through long-continued 
commerce with the ‘Truth that one learns to discern it before 
tasting it. 

If no universal criterion of truth exists, neither does any external 
criterion of truth exist. No authority, however weighty, no 
rational or logical test, however successful, can distinguish truth 
from error, ‘Truth bears testimony to itself, and all other evidence 
is superfluous. Bautain is emphatic and eloquent on this point. I 
transcribe only two out of many passages: 


Where are we if we demand a criterion of self-evidentness? How 
do you distinguish daylight from darkness? Do you also need a criterion 
of day and night?—But there are also “false dawns.”—-Whatever you 
do, you cannot dissipate error except by the exposition of the truth; you 
cannot banish the darkness except by the light.” 

For what is there that is clearer than the truth? Is a criterion needed 
. . . for love and friendship? Does not the truth shine brilliantly 
enough by its own light? Do not the affections—love, friendship—feel 
each other? When the soul is united in its depths (par le fond) to the 
pure truth, when two souls are in intimate union and act upon each 
other, what more is needed? 178 


“Vous avex raison, docteur Pangloss!” is the Mennaisian’s com- 
ment on the above. “All is for the best in the best of possible 
worlds, from which error is banished, where no false friends are 
met, and where no false lovers have ever been seen!” The 
possibility of error would indeed seem to be a problem for Bautain; 
but he has his solution ready: 


It has been said that semtiment intime deceives us, that it is the source 
of the gravest errors, in religion as in philosophy. . . . Feeling, as feel- 
ing, and in its native purity, never deceives, any more than sensation 
does. Nothing on the eed is more certain for man than what he 


experiences in his inner self (for intérieur). . And the proof of it 
is in the approbation and the condemnation 5 the conscience. . . . But 
“22nd Letter to Ferry, FB,K, Cahier “8 Ens. Phil. B., 621. 


18. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 199 


when he sets himself to reflecting upon what he feels, in order to give 
an account of it to himself, when he tries to know his momentary 
modifications and modes of being, then his reason mingles its operations 
with that of the truth; it neutralizes it, obscures it, and ruins its effects 
by reasonings founded on principles drawn from its own depths, and 
it is then that private or individual sense is substituted for common 
sense—that is, for the need and feeling for the truth, common to all 
men,"‘* 


We have here an appeal to immediate experience as the criterion 
of truth which irresistibly reminds one of the pragmatic empiricism 
of William James. ‘The parallel can be carried out in some detail; 
in fact, I can think of no better way of explaining the meaning 
of Bautain’s criterion of truth than by comparing it with James’s.*” 

Take, first of all, James’s familiar proposition that the “truth” 
of an idea is the experience to which it “leads,” the empirical “‘cash 
value” it is capable of rendering up; that there is no more validity 
in each “concept” than there is in its corresponding “percept.” 
Bautain has an exactly similar theory. ‘The first step in the know- 
ing process, as he continually insists, is the learning of social con- 
cepts, “faith in the word”; at this stage we “taste” the truth rather 
than “‘see”’ it, and its validity is more subjective than objective; we 


™% Thid., 618-619. 

%®8 1 do not, of course, mean to imply 
that James would sponsor all the appli- 
cations that Bautain makes of the prag- 
matic principle. Neither do I mean to 
imply that Bautain is a “pragmatist” in 
any thorough-going sense. In fact, if 
the word be taken in the narrow sense 
which seems to be gaining ground in 
this country—if the naturalistic pragma- 
tism of John Dewey be taken as the 
typical form of pragmatism—then it 
would be absurd to call any Catholic a 
pragmatist, or even a “semi-pragmatist.” 
It seems to me, however, that the French 
do well to use the word pragmatism, 
like the word romanticism (p. 43 supra, 
footnote 63), in a broader sense, to in- 
clude several affiliated movements—in 
this case, to include all forms of volun- 
tarism which appeal to the practical con- 
sequences of ideas (either scientific or 
religious) as a test of their truth. This 
broader sense of the word is needed, if 
we are to grant the right of many 


American religious thinkers, such as Pro- 
fessor Lyman of Union Theological 
Seminary, to continue to call themselves 
Pragmatists, while differing widely from 
the position of Professor Dewey. For 
this wider use of the word in France, 
see Berthelot’s Un Romantisme Utilitaire, 
Leclére’s Pragmatisme, Modernisme, 
Protestantisme, and other books men- 
tioned in the bibliography. For its wider 
use in American religious thought, see 
E. W. Lyman’s Theology and Human 
Problems: A Comparative Study of Ab- 
solute Idealism and Pragmatism as In- 
terpretors of Religion, N. Y., 1910, 40- 
58, 91-93, 121 et seg. 150-160. Cf. 
Father Tyrrell, Through Scylla and 
Charybdis, London, 1907, chapter vir on 
“Pragmatism.” The Catholic Modernists 
were frequently accused of being Prag- 
matists. All I claim for Bautain is that, 
on certain specific points, his position 
resembles that of James and other recog- 
nized Pragmatists. 


200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


accept it because it tastes good to us, and answers to our need.**® 
But knowledge is not really reached until “taste” gives way to 
“sight,” till mediate experience gives way to immediate experience. 
Belief and faith, which correspond to physical and metaphysical 
reality, are the pillar of fire and of cloud, “half obscure, half 
luminous,” which leads to the promised land of self-evidence. It 
is the “leading” of ideas, in other words, which gives them their 
truth. The purpose of all instruction about an object, which is 
verbal and so by faith, 1s 


to lead us gradually to the self-evidence (évidence) of that object, by’ 
rendering us capable of seeing it for ourselves, and perceiving all that 
was told us about it. He who does not reach this vision of the object 
has not well understood the doctrine; he does not know. . . . It is the 
vision [percept] of the truth which in the last resort gives authority to 
the word [concept] of instruction.*’” 


The nature of the validating percept of course varies with the 
nature of the object. For natural objects, sense-perception, espec- 
ially sight-touch perception, is the goal. A single museum is worth 
a whole city of libraries. Rational entities are not objects at all, 
one can never reach “vision” of them. Vision must come before 
and after the work of the reason, if reason is to reach valid results. 


Every rational demonstration necessarily starts from self-evidence; it 
is only on that condition that it obtains it in the conclusion. ‘Thus 
reasoning is but a passage from self-evidence to self-evidence; deduction 
is the transportation or communication of light from one clear proposition 
to another that was not clear.1%8 


Intelligible objects are never truly known except by the insight 
of genius. When genius has once “enounced” the idea of the 
object, “some receive it and see by it,” and the fact that it leads 
them to vision is the test of its truth. Those who are not willing 
to receive it “on faith” and try it out, of course never reach the 
knowledge of the intelligible object to which it corresponds. 
Finally, when we come to the realm of the divine, we are in some 
difficulty with our test, for the beatific vision of God is reserved 


™% See Psych. Exp., I, § 50. ™8 Thid., 310. 
™ Psych. Exp., I, 310, 312. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 201 


for the next world; but, even in this life, faith may lead us in the 
direction of the beatific vision; and there are certain holy men to 
whom the “gift of knowledge,” one of the “gifts of the Holy 
Spirit,” is granted, rendering them “capable not only of believing 
in eternal truth, but of understanding it,” and having “the évidence 
of it up to a certain point.”*” 

Meanwhile, for the rank and file of us, according to Bautain, 
a test of theological truth is available which again reminds one of 
William James: it is true, if it answers to our practical needs; 
if it “tastes” good, and does us good. ‘Truth, he says, sometimes 
“justifies itself practically (par le fait) more than by demonstra- 
tion.” One takes it on faith, and then there arises ‘an enjoyment, 
when the object pleases,” or “the restoration of the vital energies 
(réparation de la vie), when it nourishes.” ‘Truth has a “savor 
which recreates and fortifies”; and one can acquire and cultivate a 
discriminating taste for religious truth just as one can acquire and 
cultivate a taste for the beautiful in art or literature, or “‘a certain 
taste for the good, which, put in relation with something morally 
good, gives him an agreeable emotion, a savor of justice or of 
virtue, and at the same time a feeling of power, and a certain 
stimulus which impels the will toward well-doing.” This culti- 
vated taste is wisdom; wisdom gets us in touch with deeper realities 
than knowledge can ever reach in this life.**° 

A final point of contact between Bautain and James: they both 
appeal to “‘future experience,” and “the way things work.” ‘The 
pragmatic test of truth is, in fact, a test that never can be applied 
at the moment of decision. If I am to “taste” a supposed truth 
and test it by the way it “works” upon my system, I must first 
swallow it by faith; and if it proves to be a poisonous error, the 
discovery comes too late to do me any good. 

The “test of works” is frequently alluded to by Bautain; and 
he never fails to point out the element of risk which it involves: 


Unfortunately, when the facts speak and decide, it is too late to go 
back. ‘The consequences are posited and must take their course; it 
remains only to submit to them, profiting by their instructions for an- 
other occasion—and happy those who profit by them! One becomes 


™ Cerc. Cath., 58-59. Bautain is less * For all the above quotations, see 
cautiously mystical in his earlier works. Psych. Exp., I, § 49, pp. 323-327 


202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


wise in this world only at his own risk and peril. The experience of 
the fathers is almost always wasted for the children.*** 

One is obliged to let them commit the faults that one foresees, that 
they may acquire by experience the conviction of their error. ‘That is 
why talent, learning, genius even, cannot take the place of experience, 
of the practical knowledge of life.’*? 


Bautain’s pragmatism is not undiscriminating. The test of 
works, he admits, is not necessary in a “science of pure reasoning,” 
like mathematics; “but,” he insists, “where facts are concerned, 
the test of experience is necessary; the thought cannot be finally 
judged except by the realization of its consequences.”*** Still more 
noteworthy is the care with which he discriminates between the 
sort of “‘workings” or “consequences” by which a religious verity 
is to be tested and those by which other kinds of truth are to be 
tested. Pragmatists have commonly been unconscious of the 
variety of meanings concealed beneath the ambiguity of these terms. 
We commend the following passage, therefore, to the reader’s 
attention; for we feel that the pragmatic criterion of truth was 
never better stated: 


It is by practice that systems and reasonings are tested, as the tree is 
judged by its fruits: in things religious and moral by one’s conscience 
and by one’s acts; in natural things by common sense and utility; in the 
arts by taste and the feeling for the beautiful; in social institutions by 
the well-being or malaise of the peoples.*8 

This test [Bautain admits] is dangerous for him who attempts to 
make it and for all who take part in it. How many systems have we 
not seen appear and disappear! They try themselves in the real world; 
if they have not in them the requirements of the truth, they do not hold; 
for things do not happen in the real order as they do in our under- 
standings, where all sorts of chimeras may find room. Thus were judged 
those moral, political, and religious doctrines of the eighteenth century 
which the reason, left to herself, attempted, in her pride and in her 
great confidence in her own savoir-faire, to substitute for the Christian 
verities. [So also has Saint-Simonism recently been judged.] So long 
as it remained in the realm of speculation and between the covers of 
books, the discussion was warm; ... but when it came down into the 
field of reality, . . . it killed itself in trying to establish itself. . . . 

Let the applications and the practical outworkings appear [he con- 


1 Psych. Exp., I, 139-140. 88 Thid., 351. 
me Thid-y 352. 4 Thid., 349-350. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 203 


cludes]; let them come, and the event will decide. What is useful will 
remain after a certain oscillation; what is false or vain will be carried 
away by the river of time, which rolls oblivion in its waves,'®® 


The test here proposed is a more objective test than that of “Does 
it please me?” or “Does it help me?” ‘There has always, in fact, 
been confusion among pragmatists as to whether “‘Does it work?” 
means “Does it work for me?” or “Does it work in the world of 
nature and history, in the long run?” Yet, granting that Bautain 
is here reaching out toward a more objective form of pragmatism, 
the fact remains that the subjective test is the ultimate one. ‘“The 
facts” and “future experience” can “decide” only in the sense that 
they turn out as I wish, or against my wishes. ‘The final test is, 
“Does this supposed truth lead to results favorable to me?” 

The authority to which Bautain appeals as a court of last resort, 
then, is a purely individual and subjective authority. What, then, 
becomes of the authority of the Church! For a Catholic, that is 
a most crucial question. Bautain attacks it fearlessly, and, I should 
think, in a manner that ought to satisfy the most zealous of his 
brethren. In brief, he maintains that the objective authority of 
the Church is as necessary as the subjective authority of the intel- 
lectual conscience; that there is perfect harmony between them; 
that this harmony can already be perceived in the large, but that 
in matters of detail, in our present imperfect state, there is often 
a clash of the two authorities, in which case it is our duty to trust 
the authority of the Church, and wait for faith to lead us to further 
light. ) 

But is it not strange to haul in an “objective” authority, when 
our “subjective” authority speaks so clearly and infallibly? No! 
for without an objective authority of some sort, our subjective 
authority would do us no good at all. It is a purely formal au- 
thority; it can recognize the truth, but it cannot direct us to the 
truth. It knows what to approve and what to reject when they 
are set objectively before it, so as to stimulate it and set it in 
operation; but until then (i.e., before the decision, before the 
judgment) it does not know its own mind at all. Man needs a 
material authority “to show him objectively and thus more clearly 


288 Thid., 351-352. 


204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


what he has in his depths.”**® He needs a mirror, as it were, to 


show him his own mind. Bautain’s contention is precisely parallel 
to Royce’s contention, in the Philosophy of Loyalty: that although 
“my duty is simply my own will brought to my clear self-conscious- 
ness,” nevertheless, “left to myself alone, I can never find out 
what my will is’; and I get a will of my own “only through 
social training.”?**" 

It is impossible to understand the role of the authority of the 
Church in leading man to the truth without first considering the 
role of society and tradition. Man owes to society, says Bautain, 
three things: language, which “lights the torch of the intelligence” 
in him; a ¢redition, including both universal truths and historic 
facts; and finally “a certain rectitude of judgment, which develops 
through the commerce of men and which becomes a faculty to 
discern the true, a sense for the true.” “Thus even the subjective 
criterion of truth in its developed form is a social creation. 

What society offers us is plainly not a formal test of truth, but 
a material standard, consisting of “acquired truths.” As mankind 
develops in relation with its environment, it “enters into possession 
of a treasure of truths,” which “‘is transmitted from age to age,” 
and “goes on purifying itself with the course of the centuries” 
inasmuch as “‘the common sense of the new generations, as they 
appear, tests what the ancients transmit to them.” ‘The authority 
of social tradition is thus very great indeed, in spite of the fact 
that it is not infallible, and in spite of the fact that we are in 
duty bound to use our subjective criterion to sift out the human 
element in tradition from the divine. In any event, it is indis- 
pensable; “there is no other means which can take the place of 
this to transmit to us the first spiritual stimulus and the capacity 
for speech, as there is none other to maintain and continue the 
intellectual and moral progress of humanity across the centuries.” 

It is only when the subjective testimony of the inner sense and 
the innate ideas chimes in with the testimony of tradition that the 
conception and birth of a true idea really-takes place. When we 
discover this correspondence between truth within us, and truth 
without, it “augments . . . that primitive light which we bore 


88 Phil. Chr., I, 306. *7 1. Royce, Philosophy of Loyalty, 
24-38. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 205 


within us, and gives it a new brilliancy.” It is in fact artificial 
to separate the various means of knowledge from one another. 
“What we have just distinguished in theory is one in itself, and is 
not separated in reality.” ‘The moral, intellectual, and animal 
life is a single life, the life of man.” And so each time man 
discovers a truth, be it physical, moral, or metaphysical, the testi- 
mony of nature and the senses, the testimony of society and 
tradition, and the testimony of the inner consciousness all must 
collaborate, as the will, the intellect, and the senszbilité all collabo- 
rate. Neither physical certitude, rational (“moral’’) certitude, nor 
metaphysical certitude is possible by itself, apart from the others.*** 

We are now in a position to see why the authority of the Church 
is legitimate. It is legitimate in the same sense in which the 
authority of society and the testimony of Nature are legitimate— 
as a means to otherwise inaccessible truth. 


But why always the Church, or rather the churchman, between the 
dogma and me, between the Scriptures and me, between the Truth and 
me? Ask also, if you please, why the mother and her care between the 
world and the infant, why the master and his word between knowledge 
and the disciple, why the magistrate between the law and the citizen, 
why the air and the atmosphere between the sun and you. . . . We are 
born soul-blind, and it is hardly the part of the man born blind to say, 
“Get out of my light”!*® 


‘The Church is, in short, at the same time the custodian of that 
line of tradition to which alone our inner consciousness can assent 
with utter abandon, and the organ of society by and in which 
alone we can be educated to respond to the deepest realities. 

In the first place, then, the authority of the Church is infallible 
because the power of the Scriptures over man’s heart, when once 
his heart is opened to their influence, is irresistible. ‘There is no 
compelling all men to recognize this authority; even the authority 
of Christ found more to reject than to accept it; but he who is 
spiritually sensitive will “receive with joy the word of the doctrine, 
as answering to the desire of his heart, the need of his intelligence, 
as enlarging and strengthening the circle of his reason.”*°° To 


8 For all the quotations above, see ee Ph CAars eliieteleo 
de la Certitude, 32-48. mr Tbide is 11; 


206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


such an one, no further evidence is necessary; to all others, it 
is useless. 


This is why I see no more necessity to prove it rationally than there 
would be to demonstrate the existence of the sun, either to a man who 
enjoys sight, or to one who is deprived of it. He who sees clearly has 
no need of my reasonings, and they will never give sight to him who 
does not see it.*®* 


Of course, once the individual makes the initial surrender to the 
divine authority of the Word, the regulative and educative func- 
tions of the Church come into play, and he is no more master of 
himself. Why should he wish to be? Has he not convinced 
himself that he is dealing with the depositary of divine Truth 
itself? Once he has reached this position, he is reconciled to the 
fact that many things remain incomprehensible to him both in 
the Scriptures and in the discipline of the Church, for he knows 
that “they contain the true doctrine of progress” in which is con- 
tained the compendium of all the truths that men can grasp at 
all stages of their development. 


The passage of man here below is a path of faith and progress, of 
work and hope: his first duty is adherence to the Word which is an- 
nounced to him; his first virtue is submission from the heart to the 
authority of that Word. The veil will fall at the end, and then we 
shall see the truth of that in which we have believed.’? 


In that faith, the good Catholic will submit even his inmost 
feelings to the criticism and correction of the Church, confident 
that she knows best, and he will come to see her wisdom. 

Bautain’s criterion of truth is therefore a double one; or rather, 
the real criterion is the consciousness of the concord of the two 
criteria. One of Bautain’s critics very acutely picks out the fol- 
lowing passage’’* as the core of his teaching: 


These two revelations [conscience and Scripture] justify each other, 
then; they show by their accord that the Being who spoke on Mt. Sinai 
for the instruction of all men is the same as He who speaks in the 
conscience of each man. 


*1 2nd Letter to Ferry, FB,K, Cahier et Phil. Che, T,531t 
Trani 3 Thid., 306. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 207 


The critic finds this a too subjective criterion: 


The identity of the dictates of conscience, of the law written in the 
heart of man, with the dictates of the positive law; that is what, according 
to him, guarantees to us the intrinsic truth of the positive law.1*4 


Perhaps we shall have to agree that Bautain has not escaped 
from the subjectivism which is characteristic of mystics; it is to 
the consciousness of the concord between his objective and sub- 
jective criteria, that he appeals in the last resort. 

I doubt if Bautain ever completely harmonized his two criteria. 
In his earlier years, he was so sure of the accord between his 
philosophy and Christian truth that he walked continually in the 
light, and assumed an air of authority. His Mennaisian critic 
maliciously remarks that “che neglected nothing . . . to persuade 
his auditors that he was a man of genius,”*’® and he charges that 
Bautain’s criterion of truth is not Catholic, but “‘semi-Protestantism, 
accompanied by illuminism, in which the Church can be only an 
hors-d’oeuvre.””’* ‘This charge is plainly over-drawn; but the fact 
remains that when Bautain went to Rome, to submit his writings 
to the scrutiny of that authority which he confessed to be supreme, 
he found himself, to his horror, in a state of subconscious rebellion. 


That very morning [he wrote] before arriving at Rome, on the way, 
I had been assailed by a severe temptation. ‘What need have you of 
Rome and the Pope in order to know the Truth,” the evil spirit said 
to me. ‘Is She not before you like the Sun? Do you need the word 
of another that the sun gives light and heat? Do you not see it? Do 
you not feel it? Have you not likewise the Gospel, the word of God? 
This sun, does it not also shine for all the world, for those at least who 
have eyes to see”—TI heard all that, and I was in distress; not that I 
had ever had a thought of opposition, but the seduction to which I have 
always been most exposed has been to care little, inwardly, for outward 
forms, while yet remaining attached to the Church in all her practices, 
and never detaching myself from the centre of catholicity. There is 
a great difference [he admits] between accepting the authority of Rome 
only negatively, so to speak, and as a condition without which one cannot 
live, and accepting it positively, with a living acceptance, with love, as 
if coming to a mother to whom one owes respect and obedience.19* 


™ Rapport & VPévéque, 22. 8 Tbid., 625. 
Ens. Phil. B., 631. ™ De Régny, 251-252. 


208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


This temptation once conquered, Bautain was never the same 
again. It is true that, a few days later, when he heard that his 
Philosophie du Christianisme was likely to be put on the Index, 
the wound reopened. 


That made me heart-sick [he wrote] and it would take a great act of 
faith to adhere to such an affirmation, if it could come from the Holy 
See. . . . It is the greatest sacrifice that I could make, since it would 
be the abandonment of my whole life, of my past and of my future... . 

I feel within me [he nevertheless could add] the courage to make the 
sacrifice, and I pray God to give me strength for it by redoubling my 
faith, humility, and charity.*°* 


From that time on, Bautain was really living by his objective 
criterion of truth more than by his subjective; and the proof of 
it is that he came to speak of faith in a new sense. In the 
conférences which he gave before the Cercle Catholique in 1842- 
43, we have faith described no longer as a cognitive faculty, which 
dimly perceives the truth of that which it accepts, but as a sort of 
desperate leap in the dark, illumined by not a flash of intuition, 
and motivated solely by external evidence and the “will to believe.” 


To believe is not to see... . It is not to doubt. ... . It is not to 
suspect, or to have a mere opinion. . . . To Jelieve, is to give one’s 
assent to a word; that is, to adhere to it as fully, admit its truth as 
firmly, as if there were knowledge, although there be neither evidence 
nor demonstration. Belief thus participates in the characteristics of 
knowledge with respect to firmness of assent, and in those of opinion 
with respect to lack of evidence. In belief, the will carries the mind 
with it. In knowledge, the mind, seeing and convinced, tries to carry 
the will with it. . . . There are always motives for believing; but the 
motives which lead one to adhere to the word do not render the proposed 
truth evident; they simply give the firm conviction that it is the Word 
of God. Hence faith is at once luminous and obscure, since by it man 
sees clearly what he must believe, without having the evidence and the 
knowledge of what he believes. . . . It renders one humble and sub- 
missive, since it makes one admit by an act of will what the mind does 
not understand. It is the specific remedy for the original vice of the 
mind: pride.?°® | 


The non-Catholic will be inclined to marvel at the inconsistency 


De Régny, 262-263. ® Op. cit., 55-56. 


~ ™ 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 209 


of a Church which condemns a man for basing his philosophy upon 
the act of submission which that same act of condemnation requires 
of him. ‘The Catholic will see no inconsistency; fides implicita 
is naturally required of a man after he has given himself into the 
hands of an infallible authority; but the Church has never required 
it of the man who is examining the praeambula fidei, and trying to 
decide whether or no the Church’s authority is infallible. To 
demand faith of the honest unbeliever, before giving him sound 
reasons for believing—will such a mode of procedure not leave 
the impression that religion is essentially irrational? Such is the 
reasoning which led to the condemnation of Bautain’s philosophy; 
and one must admit that it is perfectly consistent. “The Catholic 
Church must jealously guard the rationality of the arguments by 
which she proves the existence of God and her own divine com- 
mission, or she will appear to be resting her case on nothing more 
solid than vociferous assertions and anathemas. It may be ques- 
tioned, however, whether Bautain’s fideism really undermines the 
Catholic system in any such fashion. He was not attacking the 
attempt to convince the unbeliever; he was simply attacking a 
rationalistic apologetic which, according to his observation, never 
did convince the unbeliever, and in its place he wished to set a 
non-argumentative apologetic which, if his experience with young 
men was to be trusted, was actually able to convince. We must 
turn, then, to Bautain’s apologetics before passing final judgment 
upon his epistemology; for his whole theory of knowledge, truth, 
and certitude, is meant to be an elaborate justification of his new 
method of defending the faith, and his whole philosophy is a 
protracted apology. 


III 
THE APOLOGETICS OF THE HEART AND THE APOLOGETICS OF 
THE INTELLIGENCE 


The great document for Bautain’s apologetics is of course the 
Philosophie du Christianisme. There one sees the process of per- 
suasion in actual operation, and one gets an incomparable exempli- 
fication of what Voluntarism means in the sphere of religion; for, 
in strict accordance with his theory of knowledge, Bautain aims 


210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


primarily at the heart and the will, secondarily, at the “‘intelli- 
gence,” and only lastly, if at all, at the reason. 

He had, to be sure, three very good subjects for his “apologetics. 
of the heart.” They were all of them young Romanticists, 
plagued with mal de siécle and the besoin de croire, filled with a 
“craving for the infinite,” and dreaming, as one of them expressed 
it, of “a vague object which might correspond to the need of my 
soul.”°°? ‘They recognized that their greatest need was for moral 
power—something to cure them of their fatal abulia—and they 
believed that it might be found in religion. 


Give me what I lack [cries Julien] that je ~e sais guoi, the privation 
of which and the necessity of which I feel so keenly. There must be 
something stronger than anything I am acquainted with, which will give 
me the means of doing what is right.?°? 


Bautain attracted them, they testify, because they felt “some- 
thing plein @ame,” “something vital”*°’ in his teaching; and 
because he bade them judge truth practically. 


You enjoined us [writes Adéodat] to judge the doctrine ... in 
accordance with the effects it would produce in us, relative to morality 
and happiness.”°? 


The sovereign remedy for the soul’s disease was prayer, he told 
them. Let them not wait until they were intellectually convinced 
of the reasonableness of prayer; let them pray, and judge of the 
validity of prayer by its moral effects. He refused to argue about 
the truth of the Scriptures or the dogmas of religion. Read and 
meditate, he urged them; apply these teachings to your soul’s need, 
and see if you are not healed. 


It will not be your reason, then [writes the Master], or all reasons 
put together . . . that will be able to give you the certitude of the 


Phil. Chr., 1, Notice Adéodat. See méme. Je me disais souvent: J'ai vingt 
xxxiv-xxxvi, where the following signi- ams, et Pignore pourquoi je suis au 
ficant passage also occurs: “Combien je monde! Qu’est-ce donc que ce fait 
souffrais d’un indéfinissable malaise! — singulier qu’on appelle la vie?” 


JDavais besoin d’aimer, et pétais facile a Phil. Chr., I, 60. 
menflammer pour toute ame aimante 72 Thid., Ixv. 
. . . demandant a étre aimé et compris, a thid., 8: 


quoique je ne me comprisse pas moi- 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 211 


intrinsic truth of the divine Word. Only Itself can testify to its truth; 
and to this end you must . . . receive it, and you must taste it, just as 
one can judge of a fruit only by eating it. 

Suppose [he continues] that your eye is diseased—covered with a 
cataract or paralyzed—and that a friend who takes the most tender 
interest in you, having been afflicted with the same disease, was cured 
of it by a particular remedy. This friend comes and talks to you of 
his care and of the remedy. He makes you a reasoned dissertation upon 
the nature and qualities of the medicament. His dissertation may give 
you the desire to take it, but of a surety it will not cure you. He 
presents you with the substance and tells you the directions and the 
necessary conditions. You adhere to the conditions, accept the remedy, 
take it and you are cured!?* 


If you wish, therefore, to test the truth of religion, act as if it 
were true, and see if you are not strengthened and helped! 

Under this course of instruction, the feeling of the truth of 
religion began gradually to dawn upon the minds of the three 
young Romanticists. At first it was very vague. 


Yes [writes Adéodat], the truths developed in your letters give me a 
sort of inward and spontaneous certitude; they seem to be gently inviting 
me to admit them, and to rest in them from all the fatigue of my mind. 
What is this certitude of which I am not certain, this certitude which 
is sweet to my heart, rather than reassuring for my reason? 7° 


Bautain replies that Adéodat’s certitude is vague “because your 
inner eye is feeble, because you adhere to particular truths only 
with reservations, because, free to admit the Word or to refuse it, 
your reason hesitates.””°° 
you will see more clearly. 

Later the promised “vision of the truth” began to come to all 

«¢ >] 


the disciples; they began to “see” what at first they had only 
tasted. 


Believe more strongly, he urges, and 


Truly [writes Eudore], there are instants when I feel myself as it 
were pierced with beams of light, and then I suddenly perceive the 
meaning of a word in the Gospel or one of your propositions, which I 
had hitherto admitted by godt intime rather than with understanding. 
. . . At each one of these illuminations, my horizon broadens. Another 


 Thid., 309-310. 8 rid. 299. 
™S rhid.. 287-288. 


15 


gaz ‘ ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


world unfolds itself to my gaze, and in the depths of my being there 
is something like an increase of life and of ardor which is given to me.?°* 


The “apologetics of the heart’? form the groundwork, then, of 
Bautain’s novel art of persuasion. Without argument, but with 
a reassuring air of conviction, he would prescribe certain passages 
of Scripture and certain “propositions” for his neophytes to believe, 
as a physician prescribes pellets for his patients to swallow, ordering 
them to “taste and see” if they were not benefited. In this, he 
was simply adopting the mode of procedure which Mlle. Humann 
had followed in his own case. He recognized that the crucial 
moment for him had come when he first set himself, at her sug- 
gestion, to reading the Gospels, in a receptive mood; and he 
summed up his whole experience in the words, “J’ai lu, Pai cru, 
pa vu.”’> Tt would be unjust, however, to say that Bautain 
relied solely on dogmatic assertions, whose truth was to be tested 
only by their practical “workings” and their power to satisfy the 
heart’s desires. The “‘workings” of ideas are theoretical as well 
as practical; and a “‘true” idea must have not only the power to 
satisfy the heart’s desire, but also the power to bind other ideas 
into intelligible and rational systems. “The apologetics of the 
heart must be supplemented by the apologetics of the intelligence, 
if conviction is to be complete. 


The Word divine, the principle of knowledge [he says] . . . is given 
to us as an intelligible germ, as a mother-idea. By faith or by voluntary 
adherence it is planted in our soul and pushes its roots down into that 
soil; but as it goes down into the depths of the heart, it strives at the 
same time to lift itself, to unfold itself in the mind; it strives to form 
itself, ex-pose itself, and, so to speak, blossom out there in a multitude 
of consequences which manifest all the truths it bore within it; and this 
harmonious development, which constituted knowledge, gives us... 
the proof and the consciousness of what we had already felt or tasted in 
the depths of our being through the heart.*°° 


What is the nature of these theoretical “consequences” which 
give us the “proof” of the doctrine which we have already tested 
by its practical fruits? To answer that question, one would have 


Phil. Chr.y 11,294: ” Ens. Phil. F., 89-90. 
* Ens. Phil. B., 625. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST ali 
to give an exposition of Bautain’s whole system of philosophy; for 
his whole philosophy is an extended effort to unfold the ‘‘multitude 
of consequences” which ensue when the truth of religion is once 
presupposed. We may sum up in a few words, however, the chief 
and decisive “consequence,” which (Bautain thinks) constitutes a 
triumphant and indisputable proof of the truth of religion: once 
adopt the first principles of religion as the first principles of your 
philosophy, and presto! the fragments of human knowledge, 
hitherto so disjointed that the various sciences do not even constitute 
a mechanism, begin to knit themselves marvellously together, until 
presently there rises before your astonished gaze a veritable body 
of human knowledge, all-inclusive, in which each truth is organi- 
cally related to all others. 

Modern science and modern philosophy, says Bautain, are in a 
deplorable state of chaos. “The natural sciences refuse to deal with 
anything but the visible, the corporeal, the ponderable; hence, 
Bautain claims, they are “inadequate to their object.” 


Whatever naturally comes into being is not only visible but invisible 
too; it not only shows a corporeal surface, but also has a hidden substance; 
it is not merely an effect, but bears within it something also of its cause, 
whereby it is able to appear and endure.*'® 


When the imponderables are thus ignored, there arises the 
paradox of a biology which can tell us nothing about life, and a 
psychology which knows no soul. Mathematics, on the other hand, 
is adequate to its object; but this is just because the mathematical 
object is a mental creation, which “neither exists nor lives, but is 
abstractly thought out and defined in mere words.”*** Since 
neither natural science nor mathematics is able to reach ultimate 
reality, philosophy endeavors to fill in the breach. It takes for its 
territory the realm of the “spiritual, moral, metaphysical’’**” 
neglected by science and mathematics, yet somehow it manages to 


realities 


7° Gratry, de Methodis Scientiarum, 
18. Of this essay of Gratry’s, the Men- 
naisian says: “The parts of this disser- 
tation which correspond to the paragraphs 
which M. Bautain has expounded to us 
represent almost word for word the 
language of the celebrated professor. 


The disciple has hardly troubled to do 
more than to translate it into Latin.” 
Ens. Phil. B., 641. 

“1 Gratry, de Methodis Scientiarum, 
18-19. 

*2 Thid., 19. 


214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


err even more extravagantly than either of its rivals. One reason 
for this is that philosophers, in trying to grasp the “spirit” of things, 
neglect the form, too lightly scorning the aid of science and 
mathematics.”** 


They plunge at once into the secret places and recesses of things, and 
pass by what is out in the open; they think they are scrutinizing the 
forces and first principles of Nature, and meanwhile they disdain Nature’s 
face and countenance. . . . Mathematical stability and strength—as it 
were, the aid of a heavy armor—they reject; they are ignorant of the 
changeless laws of natural forms.*** 


There is, however, a more fundamental reason for their failure. 
They forget that if God is To 6v, one must have experienced God 
before one can talk about ultimate reality; and thus if they talk 
about Him at all, they reduce Him to a rational entity, Aristotle’s 
TO Tl YV Elvat. 


And so, not having been fecundated by experience of the universal 
Being, not having been enlightened by any intuition of simple Nature, 
left to themselves alone between God and Nature, midway, as it were, 
between heaven and earth, they lack both beginning and ending, soul 
and body, . . . and meanwhile their naked mind goes about disporting 
itself and raving madly.??° 


Such being the cause of the chaos into which modern science and 
philosophy have fallen, the task of Christian philosophy is plain: 
on the one hand, it must found a new philosophy of Nature, in 
which philosophic insight into the “spirit” of things shall be com- 
bined with scientific respect for empirical facts and mathematical 
respect for form and number; and on the other hand, it must 
bring about a new marriage of philosophy and theology—or better, 
a transfiguration of philosophy by religious experience. Thus will 
be founded a truly universal sctence, in which theology and natural 
science, instead of contending with one another, will confirm one 
another. 


We affirm [says Gratry, speaking for the “school of Strasbourg”] that 


“8 This criticism is evidently levelled 714 Gratry, de Methodis Scientiarum, 
against the Naturphilosophie of Schelling 20. 
and other German Romanticists. pol {ie Ae AY: 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 215 


true science will arise if man approaches God and Nature at once, and 
takes his stand midway between things divine and things natural, below 
God and above Nature, thus conceiving a science of the universe at once 
theological, philosophical, and mathematical: in its first principle theo- 
logical, in its evolution and spirit philosophical, in the exposition and 
body of the doctrine, as it were, Mathematical—doctrinam e tribus 
unam,?16 


There evidently hovered before Bautain’s imagination, in his 
earlier period, the dream of a vast new philosophical synthesis, in 
which, as in the mediaeval synthesis, theology should once more be 
harmonized with secular learning—with modern science and the 
experimental method, this time, instead of with the learning of 
the ancients, accepted on authority. For the details of this mag- 
nificent programme of reconstruction—which, alas, remained only 
a programme—we must go to a remarkable manuscript course of 
Bautain’s, probably the one with which he opened his private class 
at Mlle. Humann’s,?” 

As we have seen, there are two main planks in Bautain’s platform 
of reconstruction: the founding of a new Naturphilosophie through 
the alliance of science, mathematics, and philosophy; and the 
founding of a new metaphysics through the alliance of philosophy 
and theology. 

The first of these two planks is a bit vague. Sometimes it seems 
as though Bautain were simply recommending that the natural 
sciences should make use more frankly of philosophical concepts like 
“life” and ‘the soul,” and that philosophy, in turn, should be 
sobered and checked in its wild flights of speculation by a more 
careful attention to the empirical data of the quantitative sciences. 
That this is part of his meaning must be evident from passages 


like the following: 


The great means and the only means of harmonizing philosophical 
doctrines, or rather, rescuing philosophy herself from the sway of arbi- 
trariness and of scientific prejudices is to restore the natural spirit to the 
natural form, philosophy to mathematics. . . . It is to admit as philo- 
sophical Ideas only such as find their ideal really and objectively existing 
in Nature, and as laws of Nature, only such as demonstrate themselves 


ong LIP ae ly ™ Philosophie, Théologique et Mathé- 
matique, (1823-24), FB,V10. 


216 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


by the laws and the pure forms of mathematics; it is to insist no longer 
on considering circle and circumference, spirit, and body, time and 
space, number and figure separately, and as if each subsisted by itself 
apart, but to see them together, as identical, always united, and main- 
tained in their union by the /ife.?"* 

Philosophy would then acquire what it cannot have of itself: objective 
certitude, natural form; .. . and its form would be the living and 
objective demonstration of itself, and of the truth of its spirit. Then, 
and only then, would there be no more philosophical schisms, no more 
French, German, Scotch philosophy, etc., but a single philosophy, as 
unified and general as Nature, the object of philosophy, is general and 
unified. . . . Then would the empty and inert forms of science, re- 
animated by the spirit, and the latter fixed and determined by the form— 
then would philosophy, reunited with mathematics, no longer be a system 
of fluctuating and uncertain opinions, . . . and mathematics, reunited 
with philosophy, resuscitated by it, would no longer be a doctrine sterile 
for the intelligence, a rational anatomy, operating only on dead bodies, 
a system of dead letters, killing the spirit, smothering genius, withering 
and petrifying the soul.?!® 


Here the term “mathematics” seems to be almost equivalent to 
“quantitative science.” Elsewhere, however, it is used in a defin- 
itely Pythagorean sense. Bautain regrets that we do not “still 
see, with Pythagoras, the expression of the laws of the universe 
in the law of numbers, and, with Plato, the order of generations 
or of genesis in the principles of geometry.”*”° 

It is impossible to tell which of these two meanings was really 
uppermost in Bautain’s mind; for he seems to have confused them 
inextricably, and he never worked out their full implications him- 
self. His pupils, however, did take the matter up. In the strange 
manuscript remains which the Abbé Carl left behind him at Juilly 
there may be seen the reductio ad absurdum of the Pythagorean 
strain in Bautain’s thinking—page after page of mystic numbers 
and figures, mingled with Cabalistic lore, derived perhaps from 
the Jewish members of the band. In the works of Father Gratry, 
on the other hand, we see a persistent and often fruitful attempt 
to make a “‘heavy armor” for philosophy by the patient cultivation 
of natural science and the higher mathematics. It is perhaps in 
Gratry’s astronomical and physiological speculations, and his bril- 


8 Op. cit., §§ 24-25. = Thid., $ 10. 
™® Tbid., §§ 11-12. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST (AV 


liant if specious application of the infinitesimal calculus to the 


elucidation of religious concepts, that this first step in Bautain’s 


program is best realized.”*? 


But the union of philosophy with mathematics is only half of 
the grand restoration of human knowledge which Bautain proposes; 
the other half is the union of philosophy with theology. ‘The 
philosophy of nature in its completed form is at best connaissance, 
and not science; it presents nature to us as a unified mechanism, 
not yet as a living organism. 


To mechanize the dead letter by reuniting philosophical] spirit with 
mathematical forms, to determine and stabilize that spirit by giving it 
back its basis or its body, is much; it is everything for the science of the 
world, and all that pertains to the temporal order; but it is not all that 
man demands for his happiness. . . . He must have a science which 
shall be not only mechanism, identification of spirit with form, but 

. . organism, living development—a vital, fecund, and fecundating 
science. . . . Like the universe, like man, and like nature, of which it 
is to be the science and the doctrine, it must have warmth and life at 
its center, it must be luminous in its development, and constant, clear, 
harmonious in its forms; and, as the center . . . always is before the 
radius, before the circle and the circumference, as Being and center are 
the absolute conditions of form and existence, so too the doctrine of pure 
and universal Being, with the doctrine of genesis, or the laws of genera- 
tion, must constitute the basis, the foundation, the point of departure of 
philosophic teaching. In fine, this teaching, in order to be true, legiti- 
mate, and vital, and to answer to the triple need of man, must be as 
profoundly religious or theological as it is rigorously mathematical.??? 


The necessity of a union of theology and philosophy springs from 
the fact that the idea of Being, the capstone of every philosophical 
system, without which it falls to pieces, or becomes a mere 
mechanism, is accessible only through religious experience. Like 
all the other ideas, it is innate; but it must be awakened from its 
state of potentiality by contact with its divine original. 
have never opened their souls to that celestial touch; they are totally 


Some men 


* Passages like the following would 
indicate that Bautain intended to do what 
Gratry did: “Since the method of ob- 
servation and experiment has been intro- 
duced into philosophy . . . philosophy 
finds herself . . . in commerce with all 
the other sciences; now, they all have 


been rejuvenated in their methodology; 
hence, she must proceed and speak like 
them if she wishes to have life and be 
appreciated. She must observe, experi- 
ment, examine.” FB,H17, verso. 

22 Philosophie, Théologique et Mathé- 
matique, §§ 18-19. 


218 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


incapacitated for philosophy. Others—and this applies to most of 
us—have “forgotten” the idea, and need to “recollect” it. This 
is the true meaning of Platonic reminiscence. 


What causes forgetfulness of the idea? The perversion of the eye 
of the soul, the swerving of its visual ray or glance from the ideal, the 
breaking of the relation between subject and object, whence results the 
absence of the latter as far as the former is concerned. What causes 
reminiscence? ‘The traces or substantial vestiges which the ideal had 
posited in the mind, and which, although overlaid, . . . nevertheless 
subsist in being, in essence, and in potentiality, and can be reawakened 
in the understanding where they have been posited. How return to 
the idea? By purging the mind of gross and terrestrial images, by 
lifting the glance toward the superior region, by putting oneself again in 
the presence of and e” rapport with real or intelligible objects, by re- 
turning from forms to Beauty, from spirit to the Truth, from existence 
to Being, to Love, to Goodness, to God.?** 


It is evident that the “theology” which Bautain proposes to unite 
with, and make the basis of philosophy is not what one usually 
understands by the term. It is not a body of doctrine, but an 
inward experience: “experimental theology,” as Bautain calls it; 
“sentimental theology,” as the Mennaisian nicknames it; “mystic 
theology,” as the Church commonly calls it. What Bautain pro- 
poses to do is not to lay down dogmatically the whole body of 
Christian theology in its integrity, and then prove its truth by 
showing the correspondence between theology and secular philoso- 
phy, as St. Thomas had done. No, his attitude toward theology as 
it stands is quite revolutionary: he proposes 


to free the fundamental dogmas of Christianity—for Christianity contains 
all truth—to free its dogmas of all scholastic subtlety, of every historical 
addition, of everything that the speculative reason, depending always 
necessarily on the senses, on times, places, and circumstances, has added 
to it, and to offer these profound dogmas to simple faith, which is the 
condition size gua non of all knowledge.?** 


In other words, he proposes to do what modern Protestant 
theology has been attempting to do, ever since Schleiermacher: to 
get behind rational theology to the religious experience from which 


*® Philosophie, Théologique et Mathé- 74 Thid., § 26. 
matique, § 6, note. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 29 


it sprang, and from which it borrows such validity as it possesses. 
What he asks of the philosopher, as a necessary condition of all 
philosophizing, is not to accept all the dogmas of theology, but to 
experience God. In this attempt to subject theology to the test of 
experience, he is undoubtedly unorthodox, from the Catholic point 
of view; but it should be noted that all the great mystics, many 
of whom are revered as saints in the Catholic Church, exhibit a 
similar tendency to reduce theology to lowest terms, and to appeal 
from doctrine to experience. 

But if philosophy is to be merged on the one hand with mathe- 
matics and natural science, and on the other hand with experimental 
theology, what place is left for philosophy itself? Well, the réle 
of philosophy in Bautain’s synthesis of human knowledge is a 
mediatorial, harmonizing réle. Philosophy is to concern itself with 
bridging the gap between the visible and the invisible, between the 
finite and the infinite; it is to show how Being issues from itself 
and becomes existence, how the Eternal becomes subject to the 
forms of time and space. It is the “historical or genetic part” of 
universal knowledge.**® Standing between God and Nature, and 
taking for its peculiar province the science of Man, it is to show 
how Man and Nature issued from God; it is furthermore to point 
out the myriad analogies which testify to the organic unity of 
all reality, and which link theology, psychology, and natural science 
together into a system in which each corroborates and is corroborated 
by the others. There would be three grand sections in this great 
corpus scientiarum: 


Inward feeling, taste for Being, or experimental theology; science of 
the existences and of their generation, or analytical philosophy; and 
science of the pure forms, or transcendental mathematics. These [says 
Bautain] might be called its soul, its mind, and its body; together they 
would form a truly orgamic system, in which the mathematical forms 
would be to the philosophy of nature what the body is to the mind, the 
form to the life, space to time, the determinant to the indeterminate; 
and in which the philosophy of nature would be to sacred ontology what 
the mind is to the soul or to the will, or the life to its foyer, what the 
circle is to the center, the indefinite to the infinite, the terminus to 
eternity.?”° 


8 Thid. =r BVO, . Sue 


220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


From the organic interrelation of all knowledge there follows 
a most important consequence: the legitimacy of the analogical 


method. 
{ 


If creature and nature form a harmonic whole, a single organism, 
which we call the world or the universe, science also [argues Bautain] 

. is not and cannot be other than unified; and if each part of the 
organism is for the whole, comprehended in the whole, in living relation 
with the whole, and with each constitutive part thereof, the science of 
each part also must be . . . in organic and analogical relation with the 
whole, and with each particular science.**’ 


Or, as the Mennaisian puts it: 


The fundamental axiom of his metaphysics is that all beings, all, 
existences, obey a common law. Each existence presupposes a being 
whence it issued, and each being presupposes an original Being... . 
Since the same law rules all that exists, it is clear that whatever is 
demonstrated of one existence will be demonstrated of all existence.** 


If, therefore, the law of the whole is the law of each part, 
then the laws of the divine or ultimately real world will find 
themselves more or less clearly exemplified throughout the whole 
creation. ‘Theological truths will find themselves corroborated by 
analogies from the natural sciences, and these analogies will in 
turn cast light upon theology. 


Visible things declare the invisible, and the facts of nature declare the 
law of man. There is in physical nature nothing indifferent, nothing 
arbitrary or fortuitous; everywhere, on the contrary, a deep meaning, 
a hidden reason. This inferior nature is but the veil of a higher Nature, 
whose brilliance pierces still through the thickness of the veil. And so 
the history of natural things, well written, is but a Symbolism.?” 


The dangers of this method are evident; and it cannot be said 
that Bautain escapes them. On the one hand, he verges on the 
grotesque in his detailed exegesis of the divine symbolism of Nature. 
The Trinity is reflected everywhere; every object, for example, 
must have at least three legs on which to stand! The Cross is 


= FB,V10, § 6. * Variétés, 5. 
*3 Ens. Phil. B., 596. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 221 


the foundation of every existence; for every vital center, as it 
begins to polarize, traces first an upright line, and then a transverse 
line! “Par exemple!” exclaims the Mennaisian, after reciting a 
few of these enormities, ““Will he show us the existence and 
necessity of the seven sacraments in the seven stars of the Great 
Bear!”**° And on the other hand, Bautain’s science is apt to 
intrude into his theology as mischievously as his theology into his 
science—mischievously, at any rate, from the point of view of 
orthodoxy. One of his critics cleverly paraphrases his teaching 
as follows: 


The visible world is a tracing, a photographic proof of the invisible 
world. . . . If, therefore, we wish to know the world of spirits, let us 
go search Nature and its laws; let us proceed from the known to the 
unknown. ‘This axiom being well fixed in the earth like a solid land- 
mark, the work of the philosopher is simplified: . . . placed between 
Nature and Revelation, he has only to apply the laws of the one to the 
dogmas of the other, and conciliate the natural order with the super- 
natural order by means of science.?*? 


The critic mistakes the real order of Bautain’s argument: he 
proceeds, not from the visible to the invisible, but from the in- 
visible to the visible; if the visible world is a “photographic proof” 
of the invisible, it is a very bad likeness, for the world as it exists 
is a degenerate world. What is true of God must be true, in 
some sense, of phenomena, while what is true of phenomena may 
not be true at all of God; for the validity of science is purely 
relative, while the validity of theology is absolute. Nevertheless, 
it is undoubtedly true that the scientific analogies by which Bautain 
seeks to show the universality of theological verities, tend to exert 
a rationalizing influence upon his theology. 

Whatever its dangers, the analogical method is fundamental to 
Bautain’s apologetics. Analogies are not proofs, he fully admits; 
but he is not trying to prove anything. He is merely trying, as 
he puts it, “to conciliate the dignity of the intelligence which de- 
mands ideas and knowledge with the cry of the heart which calls 
for faith,” and so make it possible for men of science to “justify 


™ Ens. Phil. B., 627. *! Quoted in Campaux, Le philosophe 
de Strasbourg, 36-40. 


aoe THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


their faith in the eyes of their mind, and confirm their beliefs by 
their knowledge.”*** He is trying to smooth the path of those who 
would like to believe, but are impeded by intellectual difficulties. 
Knowing that theology is full of stumbling-blocks for the secular 
mind, he seeks to recommend its dogmas indirectly, by analogies 
and illustrations drawn from more familiar fields. 


You cannot set up the dogmatic formula authoritatively [he admits] ; 
it would not be received. Well, if the direct way is not open, if you 
cannot go straight up to the principle to deduce the science rigorously 
from it, if your auditors cannot seize the truth in its abstruse forms, in 
its pure and dogmatic expression, present it in its less elevated applica- 
tions, in forms nearer to them. Well, what is there nearer to man than 
himself? . . . What speaks more vividly to his mind than the facts of 
nature. It is therefore in these two ways and under these two forms 
that the types of the prototypes, the plainest developments of the idea, 
must be sought.*3* 


Arguments based upon psychology and upon the study of the 
realm of animate Nature thus form the core of Bautain’s “apolo- 
getics of the intelligence.” In both of these realms, his procedure 
is to set forth a transcendental idea, and then justify it by showing 
its application to empirical facts. In psychology, he first sets forth 
the theological idea of man, “indicating the principle, the purpose, 
and the reason of his existence in this world, with his law which 
is that of a free but not independent being.”*** Then, like Pascal, 
he writes a moral psychology designed to make plausible the theory 
that man has fallen from a high estate, and is destined to return 
to it, stressing man’s hunger for the Infinite, his dependent and 
subject state, and his limited spontaneity, which opens the way for 
true freedom and true peace, found only in submission to a higher 
Will. In dealing with animate nature, Bautain starts with the 
theological idea that Nature is the product of a degradation of 
spirit even profounder than that involved in the fall of man. 
Hence Nature can only be understood in terms of spirit as we find 
it in man—“spirit bursting out at all points through imprisoning 
matter”—just as man can only be understood in terms of Spint 
as we find it in God. In Nature, he says, 


2 Ens. Phil. F., \xvi. 4 Thid., 41. 
8 Réflexions, 39-40. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 2215 


the intelligence . . . perceives as it were a second resplendissement of 
the glory of the Eternal, refracted in a prism less pure, and manifesting 
itself in more nuanced and duller hues. The science of nature will 
therefore be to that of man what the science of man will be to that of 


God.235 
Thus, he concludes, the inquirer will be led 


by the science of man and nature to the idea of the dogma which rules 
nature and man, and which expresses metaphysically, ideally, what is 
realized in the life of each. . . . Such was the practise of Origen and 
the doctors of Alexandria in their learned catéchéses,; where human 
knowledge served as a step to lift oneself to the intelligence of divine 
truths, where Christian philosophy, starting from faith and the idea, led 
to gnosis?®® and praxis.?*" 


But suppose that the inquirer does not respond to this treatment. 
Suppose he remains cold to the appeal of the Gospel, and, unsatis- 
fied by your loose analogies and “developments of the idea,” 
demands an iron-clad logical proof. Ought you not to attempt to 
comply with his demand? No! answers Bautain. 


Theology forgets her dignity and her celestial origin, she degrades 
herself, every time she enters the lists and combats with the reason. 
“Can you believe? ”—that is her first condition, and not “Can you under- 
stand, discuss, and argue.” . . . “We announce to you,” says the Apostle 
—not “We prove to you,” but—“‘We announce to you the Word of 
Life.”?238 


You may indeed reason with the unbeliever at the start, to convince 
him that his @ priori rational objections are inconclusive; but when 
all such obstacles are destroyed, you must cease to argue, and leave 
the Word of God to convince him by its own power. 

After that, what? Supposing the inquirer is still recalcitrant? 


In truth [answers Bautain] I shall do nothing with him if the light 
of the word does not penetrate within him. His is precisely the case 
of the blind man who remains in darkness at high noon. . . . It is a 
great illusion to believe that there is an infallible means of convincing 


5 Pins. Phil. F., 94. 87 Réflexions, 41-45. 
*® Science is frequently used by Bau- © FB. Vi10,8 223. 
tain in a sense exactly equivalent to 


YvQ@Otc. 


224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


men, that it is enough to apply this means in order to change them over, 
enough to present this supposed Criterion in order to compel their assent. 
Things do not work that way in reality. Man often resists the most 
evident truth in the most deplorable manner. ‘“The light shone in the 
darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”?*° 


There are, generally speaking, two main stages in the traditional 
Christian apologetics. In the first stage, one attempts to prove the 
validity of certain beliefs common to all or most religions; one 
argues for the existence of God, the possibility of a future life, 
etc. In the second stage, one attempts to prove that Chnistianity 
is the religion, and that the Christian “revelation,” as presented 
in the Scriptures, or in Scripture and tradition as interpreted by 
the Church, bears the earmarks of divine origin and hence must 
be infallible. It will help us to appreciate the originality of 
Bautain’s apologetics if, in closing our account of it, we deal 
specifically with his argument for the existence of God, and his 
argument for the truth of the Christian revelation. 

In the eighteenth century, the favorite arguments for the ex- 
istence of God had been arguments from external Nature, the 
cosmological and teleological arguments. For reasons that we 
have already hinted at, Bautain rejects both of them. It is im- 
possible to conclude from the finite to the infinite; hence the 
cosmological argument is inconclusive. If one may trace in Nature 
certain tendencies which look like the working of a benevolent 
Creator, one may also trace quite contrary tendencies; hence the 
teleological argument is inconclusive. The former leads logically 
to pantheism or deism; the latter, to Manichaean dualism. Neither 
of them proves the existence of the kind of God the religious 
consciousness demands. Neither of them is really convincing ex- 
cept to those who believe in God already, “those who have a living 
faith in their heart.” It is to such alone that “the heavens declare 
the glory of God’; as for those who are “destitute of faith and 
charity,” Bautain is inclined to think that it is folly to “give them, 
as proofs, nothing but the course of the moon and the planets.” 
“Far from carrying them with you by this means, in no wise, on 
the contrary, are you more likely to repel them .. . than by 


attempting to convince them by this sort of reasoning.””*° 


*° 2nd Letter to Ferry, FB,K, Cahier 9 Avertissement, Q. 1. 
ees: 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 225 


The fallacy of both these arguments, as he repeatedly points 
out, 1s to try to arrive at the Christian God in two leaps, first 
proving the existence of a great First Cause or a great Something- 
or-other, an X-God without personal characteristics or attributes, 
useful only to explain certain natural phenomena, and then sur- 
reptitiously clothing this rational entity with qualities without which 
it is unfit to worship, but which cannot be logically deduced from 
the original argument. ‘The question of God’s existence should 
not thus be separated from the question of his attributes: “Truly 
we do not see how the existence of the Infinite can be conceived 
in abstracto. . . . Existence considered . . . apart from life, is 
only a logical entity, to which no truth, no reality, corresponds. 
It is an idol the reason makes for itself.*** 

The condemnation that Bautain pronounces upon the cosmo- 
logical and teleological arguments does not fall with equal force 
upon the other traditional arguments, the ontological, psychological, 
and moral arguments. 


The ontological argument, as stated by Bautain, is as follows: 

{ 
Every man who has heard the name of God, who has understood the 
meaning of this sacred name, and who has not rejected it, believes in 
God; he believes in Him even if he imagines he does not believe in 
Him; he believes in Him in spite of his negation. God is Being; .. . 
he is He who Is; and the idea of Being is the fundamental idea, the 
mother-idea of the human understanding, without which it would be 
incapable of conceiving any existence. So it is only the fool who can 
say: God (Being) is not. What good will your reasoning do... if 
it is addressed to a fool who lacks the Absolute Major Premise of all 
reasoning, or who denies it with his will, in his heart? *4? 


By itself, however, the ontological argument is insufficient. It is, 
in fact, platitudinous. That Being is, that there is an ‘Absolute 
Major Premise,” no one can deny; what Being is, is a totally 
different question. Man knows that some Absolute Being exists, 
but “he does not know where Being manifests itself in its truth, 
where one must look for it, where one may find it in its purity, 
whether it exists everywhere or nowhere for man.”*** His inde- 
cision is resolved by no amount of observation of external nature; 


* Ibid. ™ FB,V3, § 6. 
2 Letter on Common Sense, 646-647. 


226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


it vanishes only when he begins to observe his own inner nature— 
when he combines the ontological argument with the psychological 
and moral arguments, in a very special form. 


Every man [says Bautain] bears in his deepest nature the idea of 
Being, but not every man has the philosophical consciousness of that idea; 
not every man knows or understands that God is the Absolute Being 
and that there is a necessary, permanent, and indestructible relation 
between God and the human soul—that it is only there, in the inner 
nature or in his interior sanctum, that there is found the truly irrefutable 
proof, theoretical and moral, of the Absolute, independent Being. Hence 
he goes out to seek this proof in the external world, or in his secondary 
faculties, and, seeking it where it is not, and not finding it, he remains, 
not in doubt about the truth of Being, since he himself says, “I am,’’ but 
in vagueness concerning the where and the how of the manifestation of 
Being. He knows not where to seek for God, or what to do with the 


idea of God which has its seat in his soul, and which he cannot dislodge 
(abstraire ).**4 


The existence of the idea of Being in man—this is, according 
to Bautain, the only conclusive proof of the existence of God. 
Sometimes his argument seems to be simply that the presence of 
the word God and the verb to be in human language, or their 
presence as thoughts in men’s minds, is totally incomprehensible 
unless man has really at some time come in contact with a Reality 
to which they correspond. Sometimes the argument is that in 
saying I am, the Ego simultaneously affirms the existence of an 
Absolute Alter; for I am implies I have not always been, which in 
turn, says Bautain, implies that “I am not therefore of myself, 
by myself! An Other than myself made me to be and makes 
me to exist.””?*° 

These arguments, however, are accessory to Bautain’s main 
argument. ‘To understand this main argument, we must remind 
ourselves that an idea, to Bautain, is not a rational concept but an 
innate capacity, an organic craving or need; that all such ideas are 
correlative to eternal ideals, which alone satisfy their craving; and 
that the truth of any given rational notion is tested by its capacity 
to meet the need which the idea embodies. Now the idea of Being 
or “the subjective capacity to receive the virtue of Being,”**® is 
the Idea of Ideas, the Form of Forms. 


~~ PRY 3 ae ee ee Ibsd,,. 9. 15. 46 Thid., § 3. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 227 


It is identical [says Bautain] with the soul, the type or image of the 
Principle of all things. In its root it is the soul itself, the form divine. 
In its development, it is the soul reflecting itself in its understanding or 

. it is the inward affirmation of the Ego under the pressure (actioz) 
of the Non-Ego; that is to say, the conscience.7** 


Conscience, then, or man’s need of God, is the great proof of 
the existence of God. 


This need [says Bautain] testifies to the existence of a fundamental 
relation between the Truth and him, and there is in his comscience a 
truly primitive fact which proves it. It is in this fact... that the 
point of contact and union between the terrestrial and celestial worlds 
is found. ‘That is what constitutes the irrefutable proof of the existence 
of God—so laboriously searched for in inferior nature and in the laws 
of the reason—the profoundest proof of the relation between God 
and, man.2** 


““God must exist, because I need Him so”: in these words 
Bautain’s argument for the existence of God might be summed up. 
Otherwise stated, the argument is that the idea of God is true 
because it 1s good, because it helps and satisfies. Truly, there was 
never a bolder pragmatism than this! Yet we have here no mere 
blind determination to “believe what I wish to believe, because I 
wish to believe it.” Neither have we that form of pragmatism 
which would say that the utility of the idea of God constitutes its 
truth. No, for Bautain, the appeal to the heart presupposes a 
rational argument: the Universe formed me; whatever, therefore, 
belongs to my deepest nature was imprinted there by something in 
the Universe; I find in myself a craving for ultimates and abso- 
lutes; there is therefore Something in the Universe which gave me 
this craving, and which, I hope, will satisfy it. “The argument 
might perhaps be compared with a form of theistic argument 
popularized recently by John Fiske, who deduced it from Darwin- 
ism. I find it succinctly stated in a recent book of Rufus Jones, 
the Quaker philosopher: 


A subjective need always carries an implication of an objective stimulus 
which has provoked the need. There is no hunger, as Fiske has well 


shown, for anything not tasted; there is no search for anything which 


47 Thid., § 5. * Psych. Exp., I, 70. 


16 


228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


is not in the environment, for the environment has always produced the 
appetite. So this native need of the soul [for ideal companionship] 
arose out of the divine origin of the soul, and it has steadily verified 
itself asa )safe guide. to reality yyy, 

What is at first a vague life-activity and spontaneous out-reach of 
inward energy—a feeling after companionship—remains in many persons 
vague to the end. But in others it frequently rises to a definite con- 
sciousness of a personal Presence; and there comes back into the soul 
a compelling evidence of a real Other Self who meets all the Soul’s 
need. . . . Nobody who has learned to pray in this deeper way and 
whose prayer is a prayer of communion and fellowship, wants logical 
argument for the existence of God. Such a want implies a fall from 
a higher to a lower level. It is like a demand for proof of the beauty 
one feels, or an evidence of love other than the evidence of its existence.?*” 


One perceives that behind the pragmatism of Jones’s argument, 
there is mysticism. It is so also with Bautain. Mysticism, not 
pragmatism, is always his last word. He does not ultimately rest 
his case upon the fact that we need God, but upon the fact that we 
can see God. He does not merely assume and postulate a God to 
meet his need; he claims to have met Him, and found in Him the 
complete satisfaction of all his desires. Arguments from Nature, 
arguments from the moral life, may help a man to find God; but 
in the last resort he must meet and see Him for himself. He 
must expose himself to the direct rays of the divine light, and 
“receive the radiation of Being, as the well-exposed vine receives 
the radiations of the sun.” Then all doubt will vanish. The 
man who has seen God needs no further argument. 

Bautain’s method of proving the divinity of the Christian revela- 
tion is just as original as his method of proving the existence of 
God. He puts prophecy, miracle, and historical testimony in quite 
a secondary place, denying the possibility of basing a case on such 
evidence; and he appeals directly to the faith-awakening power of 
the Book which contains the revelation, and the Church which 
announces it—a power due to the perfect correspondence between 
the Gospel and the soul’s need. If the divine is, by definition, 
what answers completely to the soul’s need, then the Gospel, which 
perfectly passes that test, is necessarily divine. 


*? Rufus Jones, The Double Search. © FBV10, § 3, note. 
Phil., 1906, 101-106. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 229 


Not Hume himself was more radical than Bautain in his attack 
upon the validity of the old apologetics based on miracle and 
buttressed with historical criticism. It may be worth while to 
review his discussion with the Bishop on this point: 


Do you think [asked the Bishop] that the Mosaic Revelation is not 
proved with certitude by the oral and written Tradition of the Synagogue 
and Christianity? 

The Mosaic Revelation [answered Bautain] presents two orders of 
truths: truths of fact (for it is the history of a nation) and divine 
truths. [Reason may establish the authenticity of the facts, he admits, 
but] as for the divine truth or the divinity of this revelation, it is from 
the start an object of faith, like all that is divine, and you will never 
prove by reasoning alone to a man of reason without faith, that a book 
written by the hand of a man is a divine authority for all men. . . .7°? 

I will ask you [returned the Bishop] if the proof drawn from the 
miracles of Jesus Christ, sensible and striking for the eye-witnesses, has 
lost its force with its brilliancy for subsequent generations? 

It will never lose any of its force [replied Bautain, in part] or its 
striking quality for delievers. . . . But we are not concerned with the 
believer. . . . We are concerned with learned pagans, with unbelievers, 
with deists. Now, how shall one prove the divinity of Jesus Christ and 
of his Gospel /ogically and by the sole authority of the reason to such 
ment By the miracles, does some one say? And the miracles—what 
guarantee will you give of their truth? The Gospel account and the 
testimony of the Apostles, who were “neither deceivers nor deceived?” 
. . . Will they not have a right to say to you at the very start that you 
are begging the question, that you are turning in a circle, the truth of 
the Gospel revelation which announces the miracles not being susceptible 
of being rationally proved by the miracles—and besides, in establishing 
that the Apostles, who were mem, could neither err nor deceive, you 
suppose a fact just as extraordinary as the very miracles they recount.”°? 

Can you expect an unbeliever [asked the Bishop] to admit the 
Resurrection of our divine Saviour, before providing him with certain 
proofs of it? And are not these proofs deduced from reasoning? 

No [replied Bautain]. I shall not expect an unbeliever to admit on 
my word, however well reasoned, the truth of the Resurrection of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. I shall not even try to prove it to him rationally, 
sure in advance that he would listen to me only with indifference, if 
not with disgust. . . . What leads men to believe in Jesus Christ, Saviour 
of men, is the humility of the heart as opposed to the exaltation of the 
mind and the pretensions of the reason which thinks to be sel f-sufficient.2°2 


an. Avertissement, Q. 2. ee bed .50 O04: 
nr dbides OL 3. 


230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Such expressions as these led many to suppose that Bautain did 
not believe in miracles at all. Three passages in his early essay, 
“The ethics of the Gospel compared with the ethics of the philoso- 
phers,” seemed especially shocking, and were exhibited by his critics 
as a justification for accusing him of heresy: 


It is impossible for us to distinguish true miracles from purely natural 
Pacis aca 


But the miracles of Jesus, those cures contrary to the laws of nature! 
. . . Well, the miracles were sudden deliverances; they had as their 
purpose the alleviating of human woes, and Jesus came to earth for no 
other end than to heal... . 


When human science shall have explained to us what nature is; when 
it shall have marked the point up to which its forces and its laws may 
extend, we may judge whether the extraordinary facts which we designate 
by the name of miracles are repugnant to the general order, out of line 
with the common laws, or whether they are not perhaps more outbreaking 
(éclatante) manifestations, more energetic developments of them.?*4 


Bautain was of course indignant at the accusation that he did 
not believe in miracles; it seems indeed a rather ridiculous accusa- 
tion, when one considers his occultistic tendencies. I doubt if 
there is a single miracle reported in the Bible or in the lives of 
the saints which he would have found it impossible, @ priori, to 
believe in. It is plain, however, that, in view of his doctrine of 
the strict organic unity of all creation, and the parallelism between 
natural and spiritual law, it was impossible for him to look upon 
miracles as infringements of the universal laws of nature. ‘“‘We 
are not inclined to believe, with many theologians,” he says, “that 
they are suspensions or derogations of the laws of nature, which 
seems to us to imply a contradiction.”*’? Wherever the Romantic 
view of the universe as an organism penetrates, the same attitude 
toward miracles is found; for Romanticism always breaks down 
the dualism between the natural and the supernatural, and makes 
the latter appear as the perfection, not the contrary, of the former. 
To the Romanticist, the signs of the divine are not inexplicability, 
arbitrariness, and lawlessness; rather the divine is that which alone 


v0 


*54 Mor. Ev. P., 68. °° FB,H, 17, verso. 


BAUTAIN AS VOLUNTARIST 23 


®° Bautain is a true Romanticist at 


makes nature comprehensible.” 
this point; he believes in miracles unreservedly, but not in mmracle, 
in the old sense. 

The way of the apologist is hard; and that of the Catholic 
apologist is particularly hard. As he sallies forth to convert the 
infidel, he is conscious that there are certain well-marked limits 
beyond which he cannot go without being disowned by the faith 
which he represents. “Chere are certain formulae which he cannot 
alter, certain admissions which he must not make. Like a diplomat 
at a peace conference, he may fail in either of two ways: by 
granting too little, or by granting too much. In the first case he 
fails to break down the antagonism of the adversary; in the second, 
he fails to get his terms of capitulation ratified at home. Speaking 
as a rank outsider, I should say that the Catholic apologist of the 
traditional type fails for the first of these two reasons. He grants 
too little. He keeps himself so safely intrenched within traditional 
phraseology that, while he satisfies his brethren concerning his 
orthodoxy, and gives them the sense that the faith is being ably 
defended, he does not even interest the unbeliever, much _ less 
convert him. ‘This, after all, is the more abject failure of the 
two. Why write an apology at all, if it convinces no one but 
yourself? It is to Bautain’s lasting credit that he failed in the 
second way, and not in the first. Whatever the weaknesses and 
dangers of his apologetics—and they are many—he did at least 
make an honest and more or less successful effort to do what 
every real apologist must do: put himself in the place of the 
unbeliever, face his difficulties as if they were his own, and find 
a solution for them which is at least comprehensible to the unbe- 
liever, because phrased in his language. I defy any non-Catholic 
to read extensively in Bautain without saying to himself, “Well, 
at any rate, he makes Catholicism intelligible to me. If I could 
be converted to Catholicism, it would be by that sort of argument!” 

One cannot help wondering why the Church should prefer the 
apologist who merely defends the faith, to the apologist who really 


*8 This explains why the “New The- which the “Old Theology” still clings. 
ology” in Protestant circles, which has Cf. Horace Bushnell’s position in Nature 
Romanticist antecedents, tends to mini- and the Supernatural with Franz Baader’s 
mize the apologetic value of miracles, to “relative supernaturalism.” 


232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


propagates the faith—even if, in the heat of his passion for souls, 
he is occasionally guilty of stating old doctrines in novel and 
unconventional terms. One cannot help regretting the fact that, 
not only in Bautain’s day but in more recent years,’*’ the traditional 
apologetic, cold and unconvincing, has always succeeded in crush- 
ing out every attempt to present Catholicism in a form acceptable 
to the modern man. One cannot help sympathizing with the 
reproach which one of Bautain’s half-converted followers addressed 
to the upholders of the old apologetics: 


We had asked [he writes] whether they intended to go on preaching 
to unlistening ears, following a method which convinced no one and 
persuaded no one. . . . We had invited the reactionary clergy to mingle 
a bit more in our life of anguish and misery; and they did not under- 
stand what we meant by that. And, for a fact, have the partisans of 
scholasticism—of that method which expresses itself practically in hard- 
_ness of heart—have they ever, in imagination, stretched themselves upon 
the cross of doubt, and thence directed an understanding glance, a sym- 
pathetic glance, toward the multitude of those who are writhing in the 
anguish of unbelief? Eh, mais vraiment non. What does that matter 
to them? Provided they avenge the Church against the infidels (who do 
not listen to them), their work is accomplished; they have no mission 
to convert them.?°® 


*7T am thinking, of course, of the 8 These are the words of Paul Roch- 
Abbé Laberthonniére’s remarkable Essais ette, a Saint-Simonian Socialist, editor of 
de philosophie religieuse, put on the In- the Journal du Haut- et Bas-Rhin. See 
dex for being too convincing to the his pamphlet in defense of Bautain, Deux 
unbeliever ! mots a Pex-éléve, Strasbourg, 1834, 20- 


al. 


CHAPTER IV 
BAUTAIN’S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 


T Is NOT SURPRISING that to many of his contemporaries— 
even including his former friend and associate, Damiron' 
—Bautain seemed to be a skeptic, mercilessly making war upon 
all constructive philosophies, and upon reason itself, in order to drive 
men into the arms of a blind and fanatical faith. If one reads 
nothing but the critical and polemical pamphlets and articles which 
first brought him into national prominence, one almost inevitably 
gets this impression. Nothing stands before his destructive criti- 
cism. He attacks all the current philosophical tendencies, one after 
another; and if, for a time, he appears to ally himself with one 
tendency rather than another, the alliance is purely strategic. 
When the common enemy is destroyed, the alliance is dissolved, 
and he turns to attack his erstwhile comrades. ‘Thus, in his criti- 
cism of eighteenth-century philosophy, Bautain makes common 
cause with all the Romanticists and Idealists, only to turn and 
criticize the latter more vehemently yet. In his criticism of the 
scholasticism of the seminaries, he makes common cause with the 
Traditionalists; but, just as we are about to classify him as a 
Traditionalist, he turns and launches his sharpest barbs at Lamen- 
nais. Naturally, the effect of all this was to make him a host of 
enemies and get him a reputation as a universal destroyer; and so, 
when the scholastics finally brought about his ecclesiastical assassi- 
nation, there was little mourning over his demise—except in Stras- 
bourg, where his constructive philosophy was known. 
For us, however, now that we understand the main drift of 
Bautain’s philosophy, these critical essays have a significance quite 
different. “They are not the random shots of an aimless skeptic, 


1Damiron, Essai sur Vhistoire de la keen, incisive, penetrating, while his dog- 
philosophie en France au 19me siécle, matism is not strong enough to reassure 
440-449, esp. 449, where Bautain is the minds which he has shaken at the 
called “always critical and never eclec- start. One may easily be led to deny 
tic.? “Doubt,” says Damiron, “is at the all that he denies, without also being 
bottom of all his objections, and it is brought to believe all that he believes.” 


234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


interested in nothing but destruction, but the consistent reactions 
of a man who occupies a very definite philosophical position, and 
defends it against all comers. As such, they not only cast great 
light on the general philosophical situation, but serve to define 
Bautain’s position with great exactitude. If we combine these 
critical reactions to his contemporaries with his eclectic writings 
on the history of philosophy, we shall get a very good notion of 
his philosophical antipathies and affinities, and be in a position to 
define his place in the history of thought. 


I 


BAUTAIN AND His CONTEMPORARIES 


1. His critique of eighteenth-century philosophy. 

As we have seen, the reaction against eighteenth-century philoso- 
phy was in full swing when Bautain appeared upon the scene. 
Auguste Comte, who was destined to continue the eighteenth-cen- 
tury tradition and reinstate the natural sciences in philosophy, was 
still an obscure figure, quite over-shadowed by Victor Cousin and 
the Eclectics. “The Normal School still prevailed over the Poly- 
technic. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find Bautain 
referring to the eighteenth century in a tone of derision—very 
much as our younger contemporaries refer to the Mid-Victorian 
Epoch—as if the characteristic ideas of that period were already 
too fully discredited to deserve discussion. 


The metaphysics of Condillac—if metaphysics there be in Condillac— 
the ethics of Helvetius, the politics of the Social Contract, and, brooding 
over all and in all, the genius or familiar spirit of Voltaire: that is what 
constituted speculative and practical philosophy in France at the com- 
mencement of the nineteenth century. It was materialism, sensualism, 
or egoism in action. And so every one at that epoch was a philosopher, 
and all the theories of the natural sciences decorated themselves pomp- 
ously and ridiculously with the name of philosophy. It is thus that 
we had the philosophy of chemistry, of botany, of physics, of astronomy, 
of anatomy. And with so many philosophers and in the midst of so 
many philosophies, there was really nothing that merited the name, or 
rather there remained only the name.? 


If Bautain were asked what, in general, was the trouble with 


INP THE HISTORY" OF THOUGHT 235 


this pseudo-philosophy which he so despised, he would answer just 
as any Romanticist might answer: the trouble was that the eight- 
eenth-century philosophers, by trusting too exclusively to discursive 
reason, had lost the intuition of the organic Whole, and been 
reduced to an abstract, piecemeal, mechanical view of things. ‘This 
criticism is best expressed in an eloquent passage in one of Bautain’s 
manuscript courses entitled Philosophie théologique et mathé- 
matique’—probably the very course with which he opened his 
private class at Mlle. Humann’s, after his suspension: 


One should not ¢himk the universe, make it, or construct it, actively 
and arbitrarily, without acquaintance with the plan or with its laws; 
but one should see it as it is, receive and reflect its action; one should 
contemplate and ideate it, to obtain the idea and the science* of it. If 
then the human mind... had been able to content itself with the 
simple aspect of nature, seeing her and reflecting her as she lives and 
exists before it; .. . if, more faithful to his law, man had applied 
himself to the contemplation of that Nature; . . . if, with a pure soul 
and a single eye, he had embraced her in her unity, as he embraces or 
envisages the vault of heaven, as he embraces or envisages a living organ- 
ism, as he considers or admires a work of art; if he had insisted upon 
seeing the parts only in their . . . relations to each other and the whole, 
and never in isolation, each for itself, by section, division, and abstrac- 
tion; if, finally, he had remembered that it is not by changing zenith 
and running about the earth that he can enlarge his horizon, but by 
mounting vertically and raising himself above it—we should even to-day 
have but a single science, as there is but a single universe.” 


It was the fatal mistake of eighteenth-century philosophy, one 
gathers, to lose this view of the concrete, living whole, and replace 
it by a “rational anatomy, operating only upon corpses,”® whereby 
“‘we separate incessantly that which is identical in itself, that which 
nature has united.”’ ‘The world was thus reduced from an 
organism to “wne belle machine, an ingenious mechanism, a great 
clock,”* which could be taken to pieces and put together again; 
and, to complete the absurdity of the process, the abstract relations 


"Phil. Chr., IJ, 21-22. * FB,V10. divided line. Jdeas stand in the same 
“Science is generally a technical term contrast to notions. 

with Bautain. It stands in contrast to 5 FB,V10, §§ 6, 7. 

connaissance, and represents true meta- Mabzaee uly s 

physical knowledge as over against em- " Tbhid., § 15. 


pirical knowledge. Cf. Plato’s twice- 8 Tbid., § 8. 


236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


and magnitudes of these mechanical parts were hypostatized and 
treated as real entities.° In this artificial world of his own crea- 
tion, man found himself to be an anomaly and a helpless wanderer 
—*“a broken column, without summit, and without base, rolling 
in the wave of time.”’*° 

The only eighteenth-century philosopher to whom Bautain gives 
the courtesy of a detailed critique, in his review of recent philo- 
sophical tendencies, is Condillac. “The fundamental difficulty with 
his philosophy is that it is based upon an atomistic and intellectual- 
istic psychology. “The final result of its efforts is to explain how 
an abstraction is formed; and it naively believes itself to have 
explained man, when it has given an account, according to its 
method, of how he forms a generalization.”’* As a matter of 
fact, Condillac’s famous statue never fully came to life; nothing 
is fully alive that is merely sentient or intellectual, and lacks 
“the will, the foyer of the life.”’? A philosophy based upon such 
an artificial and truncated psychology is vitiated from the start. 

Here again Bautain shows himself a true Romanticist; a tendency 
toward voluntarism in psychology is characteristic of the period. 


2. Critique of the Scotch School. 

For Bautain, the great merit of the Scotch philosophy, in which 
he was trained, lay in its empiricism. It does not play fast and 
loose with the facts, or build air-castles of abstractions; it applies 
the methods of Bacon in the field of psychology, and refuses to 
assert anything which introspection does not confirm. Condillac 
had banished the soul and the moral life from psychology; the 
Scotch school, unable to account for such moumena, yet admits 
them under the name of “first principles” or “primitive facts” in 
which one must believe—‘“‘so true is it,” remarks Bautain, “‘that 


in order to know or learn anything one must start from faith in 


a principle.”’*® 


But although the Scotch school has enriched philosophy with a 
great deal of valuable psychological data, it is open to serious ques- 
tion whether by its methods the foundations of a systematic philoso- 


°FB,V10, § 10.  Ihid., § 8. the Psych. Exp., arabics to the pamphlet 


“Ens. Phil. F., xviii. (Roman nu- edition.) 
merals refer to the version prefixed to 2 Thid., xix. % Phil. Chr., I, 30. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 237 


phy can be solidly laid. For one thing, as Bautain points out, the 
fundamental truths of common sense, of which the Scotch philoso- 
phy makes so much, have been “singularly multiplied, . . . so that 
every time they encounter a fact in the human mind which they 
cannot resolve into anterior facts, and where admission is never- 
theless necessary to explain others, they set it up as a primitive fact 
of human nature, greet it with the name of first principle, and 
thus make of it a sort of dogma, a philosophical article of faith.”** 
What assurance have we that these supposedly “primitive” facts 
of consciousness are any more irreducible than the supposedly 
“simple” elements of modern chemistry? Do they not rather 
represent unsolved problems, complex phenomena “undecomposed 
up to date.”*® Furthermore, it has been proved by Kant that the 
“first principles” at which one arrives by an analysis of the human 
consciousness are purely relative and subjective. If we are to form 
a true picture of the real world, we must try to escape from 
precisely those subjective categories upon which the Scotch philoso- 
phy rests with all its weight. 

Even supposing the Scotch philosophy to be true as far as it goes, 
it falls absurdly short of the sort of philosophy we all demand, for 
it has nothing to say on ultimate questions. As with Baconian 
science in general, the significance of the Scotch psychology lies 
in its practical utility, not in its metaphysical adequacy. It deals 
only with phenomena; the “laws” it discovers are laws of sequence 
and not of real causality; if it admits the existence of noumena, 
they simply play the rédle of colorless limiting concepts, of which 
nothing definite can be affirmed. “One ought not give the name 
of science to descriptions which at bottom explain nothing,” says 
Bautain, “nor, above all, attempt to philosophize in that fashion. 
Monographs on the faculties, hanging together no more consistently 
than the treatises of our Physics courses or the chapters of our 
Physiology books, do not give the science of man; .: »As* to 
immortality and other ultimate questions, the Scotch say cautiously 
that their answers are “not yet ascertained.” 


It is necessary, as you see, then [explodes Bautain] to adjourn decision 


4 Thid., 29-30. Ens. Phil. F., xxv. 
% Choses, 422. 


238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


on the spirituality and immortality of the soul indefinitely, since in the 
three thousand years that men have busied themselves with philosophy 
they have not been able to gather enough facts to prove this important 
truth. But until then, until that grave question is settled, if humanity, 
if man had no other sources of conviction, no other motives for hope 
and certitude than the inductions of the Scottish philosophy, what would 
become of him in his every-day life? Man cannot remain ignorant or 
indifferent where questions of this sort are concerned, without degrading 
himself. But all these problems are admitted to be insoluble by the 
Scotch school: it disdains to deal with them, treating them as imperti- 
nent questions—and to be sure they are very embarrassing for a doctrine 
which, in trying to explain man, sees in him only an existence, and takes 
him for a bare fact. After all, he who is willing to believe only in 
the testimony of his speculative and rational consciousness (for the moral 
conscience is not here considered) can admit only the facts that it per- 
ceives. Now it can perceive only what affects it in the present moment; 
. . . hence it is clear that the Scotch school, to be faithful to its prin- 
ciple, must repudiate all questions of origin, nature, and destiny.** 


3. Critique of German Idealism and French Eclecticism. 
Le panthéisme, voila Pennemi! 

Up to this point Bautain has been speaking quite as a German 
Idealist or a French Eclectic might have spoken. ‘They, too, 
criticized the mechanistic view of the world, and came out for a 
vitalistic, dynamic, organic cosmology; they, too, were dissatisfied 
with the cautious and piecemeal philosophy of the Scotch realists, 
and, trusting in the higher faculties, launched out en fleine 
métaphysique. Bautain is in hearty sympathy with the idealistic 
reaction against extreme realism and extreme materialism; and, 
so far as the motives and intentions of the Idealists are concerned, 
he finds them admirable: “it is the need they feel of reducing 
all truth to a single truth, to unity, after all has been broken and 
scattered; it is the desire for constructing, building, consolidating, 
now that the process of sapping, destroying, overturning has lasted 
so long.”’* 

et even while he views this reaction with approval, he points 
out that it has gone too far. In epistemology, the eighteenth cen- 
tury had overstressed the role of the object in the knowing process, 
to the point of denying the spontaneity of the knowing subject, 
and making the mind a mere tabula rasa, “having only the capacity 


Phil. Che.; 41,033-35. Te Ge Bred. 155. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT pa 


to receive the imprint which the object leaves upon it.” Realism 
of this sort had determinism and materialism for its natural con- 
sequences; for it explained man “more by his exterior and what 
surrounds him than by what he is in himself.” But the German 
Idealists, true to their introspective national temperament, have 
rushed to the opposite extreme, and “pretend to dominate reality, 
if not to create it.’ ‘All comes from the subject,” they say, “and 
the object, if it exists, is only the unknown cause or even the 
occasion of the development of the subject, who draws all knowl- 
edge from himself, and posits it outwardly by his innate need of 
manifesting himself, objectivizing himself, so that the universe is 


the manifestation of man’s ideas.’’?® 


Formerly [says Bautain] we were offered, as the science of man and 
nature, experiments, particular observations, descriptions, words. ‘To-day, 
there is first laid down the Idea, the principle that each bears in himself. 
The idea contains everything; all that remains to be done is to open it 
out and draw from it its consequences, which every one deduces, as a 
matter of fact, to suit himself, so that our scientific systems bear a strong 


resemblance to poetic creations. . . . They are immense frames which 
remain empty, general views which are not filled in, magnificent pro- 
grammes which are not realized. . . . Hence great confusion in doctrine,. 


which is taken for unity, much obscurity which is thought to be pro- 
fundity, and a vast vagueness which is called universality.”° 


The criticism of idealistic epistemology here stated is essentially 
the same as that which is implied in the title of a recent book of 
Professor Santayana’s: Absolute Egotism in German Philosophy. 
Absolute subjectivism, or mysticism, based on absolute egotism— 
such is Bautain’s characterization of the idealistic position. How 
accurate it is, one is somewhat at a loss to say, for, as Professor 
Baudin remarks, “‘Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had taken advantage 
of Kant’s absence, and not written their theories of knowledge’; 
yet as one thinks over all the great systems of the Romantic period, 
and asks where they got their central ideas and how they justify 
them, one realizes that something very lke a mystic intuition, 
unproved and unprovable, lies at the heart of each. Is Bautain 
far wrong when he gives the following description of an Idealist 


See Psych. Exp., I, 225, 229, for all Phil. Chr., II, 161-162. 
quotations in this paragraph. 


240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


in the act of conceiving the Idea on which he is to base his system? 
Would it apply only to Schelling in the midst of one of his “‘in- 
tellectual intuitions,” or also to Hegel? Was not Hegel suspici- 
ously touchy about the accusation of Mysticism? 


For him, the subjective and the objective, the contemplating mind 
with the idea which is the fruit of contemplation, and the contemplated 
object or ideal, are confounded. ‘There, all oppositions disappear, all 
distinctions are effaced; contraries are absorbed in the point of indiffer- 
ence or absolute identity; there is no longer either God or universe, but 
only the idea . . . the mind knowing itself in the known idea as being 
itself all, and all being itself.?+ 


In this passage, it is the accusation of mysticism which is stressed; 
yet the great fault of the Idealists, in Bautain’s eyes, is not their 
mysticism—he himself is a mystic, as we have seen—but their 
subjectivism, which is rooted in their moral egotism. ‘There is a 
radical difference, for Bautain, between a mysticism which consists 
in opening oneself to the influence of the whole external world, 
natural, social, and divine, and then trusting the intuitions which 
are born of that intercourse, and a mysticism which consists in 
cutting oneself off from the universe by taking an attitude of 
proud self-sufficiency, and then trusting one’s own subjective 
intuitions. 


Behold these proud philosophers [he cries] who wish to join to the 
dignity of morality the triumph of independence! They talk incessantly 
about the absolute, and they know only phenomena. . . . Shut up as they 
are in the narrow sphere of their understanding, they cannot escape the 
law of contradiction which dominates there. Their will stiffens itself 
with all its force so as not to yield to any influence of word or of 
example, so as to obey nothing but itself; and at any moment an im- 
pulsion from without comes and adds itself to the will’s motus proprius, 
complicates it unawares, and makes it deviate. ‘They think themselves 
independent; and they are modified every instant of their lives by what 
surrounds them. ‘They think themselves heroes of virtue, of disinter- 
estedness, of greatness of soul; and they do not see that the Ego being 
the sole principle of their actions is also their end, and that they are 
thus held within the vicious circle of Egoism.*? 


Subjectivism in epistemology leads inevitably to  spiritualistic 


1 FBV3, § 25. *2 Phil. Chr., 1, 63-64. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 241 


pantheism in cosmology. As the eighteenth-century philosophers, 
with their realistic objectivism, had fastened their attention on the 
external forms of things, and missed their inner life, so the Ideal- 
ists, with their intense subjectivism, were fastening their attention 
upon the inner world of life and spirit, and neglecting the facts 
of natural science, which alone could give stability and veracity to 
their philosophical constructions. A world of spirit without form 
(pantheistic spiritualism) is as bad as a world of form without 
spirit (mechanistic materialism).?* Yet this is the view to which 
the egotistic subjectivism of the Idealist irresistibly drives him. 


If man . . . entering into his own depths, gathering himself energeti- 
cally together to seize in his deepest subjectivity the being which he 
seeks . . . isolates himself from what surrounds him .. . and tries to 
live in the pure and simple feeling of the life he wishes to seize in its 
principle and its nature . .. feeling himself within himself, strong, 
powerful, free, immortal; feeling himself with all the energy of his 
Ego, and confusing the action of the objective Being, who posited him 
and sustains him, with the reaction of his own nature which answers 
to it, he declares that the Universe, the world, the multiple existences, 
are but illusions and appearances; that God alone is . . . that is, himself 
feeling himself to be. . . . Here the human self is deified; it is panthe- 
ism at its highest stage; it is the absolute identity of the Hindoos; it is 
the transcendental egoism of the moderns.*4 


The disease of Idealism is now diagnosed: Pantheism! Arrived 
at this point in his criticism of the German philosophers, Bautain 
henceforth pays no more attention to the details of their philoso- 
phies. Beneath the minor points of difference which distinguish 
Fichte’s transcendental Ego from Schelling’s Absolute, Schleier- 
macher’s Universum, and Hegel’s Idea, he discerns a common 
pantheistic creed, involving the confusion of God, Man, and the 
Universe, and the blurring of all distinctions. He states this com- 
mon creed in the following terms: 


As the universe in its unfolding is distinguished into two parts, the 
ideal and the real, the knower and the known, so science also is divided 
into two sections: 


3 FBV10, § 14. These words of Goschler perfectly re- 
* Goschler, Du Panthéisme, 11-12.  flect Bautain’s own views. 


242 . THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


(1). Pure philosophy or the contemplation of the Absolute in itself, 
above and independent of all forms, of all phenomena—this is the science 
of the Holy of Holies, reserved for the most advanced initiates. 

(2). Applied philosophy, which is but a vast symbolism, expressing 
the development of the One or the All, in the passing formule of 
humanity and of the world. [This alone, says Bautain, is taught exoteri- 
cally. Although purposely cloaked in baffling obscurities, it] flatters the 
mind most remarkably, because from this height one thinks to dominate 
everything.”° 

i 

Was German Idealism really an esoteric religious cult, preaching 
a pantheistic faith under cover of philosophical terminologyt 
Such an accusation seems a bit fantastic; and I doubt if Bautain 
meant it seriously. Had he cared to press the charge in all sober- 
ness, he might have pointed to the esoteric tendency which ran 
through the whole Romantic movement: the wide gulf between 
the “man of genius” and the vulgar herd, with whom (since they 
were incapable of understanding him and quite capable of turning 
and rending him) he could communicate only in tropes and 
parables! However the accusation is to be understood, Bautain 
was undoubtedly alarmed at the rapid spread of Romantic Panthe- 
ism among the educated youth of France and Germany. As he 
found it cropping out in the most unexpected quarters, and subtly 
permeating the whole intellectual atmosphere, he may well have 
sensed a vast conspiracy, and felt himself called upon to warn 
the whole world against the oncoming pestilence. As he lifts 
his voice to describe the evil consequences of Pantheism—the 
scourge of the nineteenth century, as Materialism was the scourge. 
of the eighteenth—he becomes eloquent, and almost prophetic. 

In religion, says Bautain, Pantheism means the abandonment of 
all norms of judgment, and the simultaneous acceptance of rival 
creeds and rival codes. The only essential thing in religion is the ~ 
adoration of the Absolute, and all religions equally typify “the 
manifestation of the Infinite, the triumph of spirit over matter, 
the victory of the idea over the form.”*® Each was a necessary 
stage in the evolution of the Absolute, and all will pass away, to 
give way to new creeds and codes that will reveal a new possibility 
of existence, till the richness of the Idea has at last been fully 


© Phil. Chr. II, 156. bid, 158: 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 243 


unfolded, for “God . . . is everything, and everything is God; 
especially man, for it is in humanity that the Absolute reaches 
self-consciousness. . . . The ethics of such a religion consists in 
the development of life, as intense as possible, and in all its forms, 
in order to free the idea from its shackles and aid in the mani- 
festation of the great All.”*’ Charity and other definitely con- 
ceived virtues give place to vague notions like “harmony” and 
“fusion”; piety becomes an indefinite and universal aspiration to- 
ward the Infinite, valued largely for aesthetic reasons, and culti- 
vated as an emotional outlet. “How many of our contemporaries,” 
says Bautain, “are religious after this fashion, in the imagination 
more than in the soul, more from artistic taste than from a recog- 
nized need of God!”®* What they love, he remarks, is not truth 
and holiness but Gothic architecture and picturesque ceremonies. 

In art and literature, the beautiful is confused with the ugly. 
The object of art, say the pantheists, is not the imitation of natural 
beauty but “the manifestation of the idea by the form.” Every- 
thing falls under this formula; all things are manifestations of 
the All, and hence good subjects for art. 


Hence the principal traits which characterize and disfigure the art of our 
day: the affectation of the grandiose, which tries to give the feeling of 
the All in each thing, and reveal profundity even in the slightest de- 
tails, which results in a sublime grotesque, as the exaggerated expression 
of the trivial and the ugly gives the ignoble and the horrible; the pre- 
tention to follow no rule, because genius knows none, because enthusiasm 
cannot constrain itself thereto; the violation of the moral laws and the 
rules of decency, which fetter, they say, by arbitrary conventions, the 
expression of the beautiful and the sublime.?® 


In morals, the distinction between good and evil breaks down. 
Since all is a necessary unfolding of the Idea, all is justified, when 
looked at from a high enough point of view. ‘The pantheist “‘sees 
God everywhere, and good in everything—simply because it is.””*° 
Virtue consists in floating with the stream of the Zeitgeist, “that 
irresistible force which bears the century along and which is mani- 
fested by what we call opinion,”** and in giving free course to the 
vital instincts that are the voice of God speaking within. 


Rolhia:, 159, 8 Thid., 163. © Mor. Ev. D., 341. 
” Ibid., 163-164. “ Phil. Chr., II, 164. 


17 


244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


The principles of this morality might be formulated somewhat 
as follows: 


One must follow the movement of nature, spontaneity, instinct; 
abandon oneself to the passions which spring up in the heart, to all the 
desires which sweep us with them, all the impressions which carry us 
away.°> 

Life is an endless series of transformations, an incessant metempsychosis, 
a purposeless phantasmagoria, a je we sais guoi.** 

All is permissible for man, all is within his rights: his power has no 
limit but his will, his will no bounds but his good pleasure.** 

If All is One, there is neither good nor ill.*° 


In politics, as in private life, all morality and all liberty disappear. 
‘The State becomes supreme and irresponsible. 


For [says Bautain] you are no longer persons, individuals, citizens; you 
are the branches of a tree, the radiations of a centre, the movements of 
a force, the modifications of a substance. There is no more liberty for 
you in society than in the universe; for society, in order to be true, must 
be made in the image and likeness of the great All. And so just as in 
the universe it is the One which produces All, and all the existences are 
but its modes and instruments, so in politics you are to be the modes and 


instruments of the All which is called the State. The State—a great word. 


about which a lot of furore is made, but which, after all, always means 
some one—the State is All, and must do everything in its interest and 
for its glory; the rest is nothing.*® 


And how will the pantheistic State conduct itself among the 
nations of the world? Bautain’s answer is startling in its prophetic 
insight : 


Where necessity rules, there is no Jonger any question of justice, virtue, 
conscience, and remorse, there are simply questions of public safety and 
raisons d’Etat which imperiously demand such and such a measure; and 
that measure is just, because it is necessary. ‘The interests of a few men 
may be injured thereby; that is a private misfortune which, is obliterated 
in the common good: these are eventualities which disappear in the 
transcendental view of history, as little things vanish in a vast horizon. 
From that height, one sees the life of the great All developing in the 


% Mor. Ev. D., 343. * Phil. Chr., Il, 166. 
8 Tbid., 342. * Mor. Ev. D., 344-345. 
**Goschler, op. cit., 134. 


i 


LINGLE HishOoRy, Ons DHOUGHT 245 


life of the peoples, manifesting itself energetically by their agitations, 
and often unable to break forth except by terrific catastrophes. Hence 
comes the shock of nations one against another, and war, without which 
nothing great is accomplished. It is at the cost of blood that the mani- 
festation of the Idea in this world takes place; and it is always the Idea 
which triumphs. It is therefore the fact, that is, force, which finally 
decides the fate of peoples, and on the field of battle as in the market- 
place, to be right, one must be the stronger: the law is always on the 
side of the conqueror." 


Realpolitik and von Treitschke, predicted in the first half of 
the nineteenth century! If we admire Professor Dewey’s per- 
spicacity in tracing a connection, after the event, between German 
philosophy and politics, what shall we say of Bautain, who predicted 
the consequences of that philosophy before the event? It is only 
fair to add that Bautain has no animus against the Germans as 
such, and aims his attack quite as much against the Eclectics as 
against the Idealists. 

As for Eclecticism, Bautain pours contempt upon it as all con- 
verts tend to pour contempt upon everything they did and thought 
while they were yet in their sins. ‘“‘We set ourselves,” he says, 
reminiscently, “to write the history of philosophy, because we had 
no philosophy, with the intention of composing one by means of 
the products of all the schools, diverse and even contradictory as 
they were. It was a case of trying to make truth out of all the 
errors.”*> How choose between rival doctrines when you have 
no criterion of truth? 

Bautain grants that Eclecticism is not pantheistic to the core; 
it is a petit panthéisme, mingled with many other ingredients.” 
Cousin was too prudent to leave his unorthodoxy unveiled, and it 
was only in certain involuntary expressions like “the ‘Trinity of 
the Infinite, the Finite, and their relations, or God, Nature, and 
Humanity,” that he revealed it. Yet in one aspect of his teaching, 
and that a most essential one, he reveals, says Bautain, that con- 
fusion of opposites which is the chief characteristic of pantheism: 


*7 Phil. Chr., 11, 164-165. had not the audacity; it professed to be 

8 Choses, 422-423. Christian and had not the faith; it is 

Cf. Cerc. Cath., 55, where Bautain pantheistic without wishing to be, and 
says that Eclecticism “has not the cour- it is not Christian though wishing to 
age of its convictions or of its sym- appear so.” 


pathies; it wanted to be Hegelian and 


246 THE PHILOSOPHY. OF (BAO TAIN 


he tends to admit all philosophical doctrines upon an equal footing, 
and so blurs the distinction between true and false. In the Ec- 
lectic view, each epoch in the history of thought, “no matter how 
perverted it may appear,” has its place. “It was destined to repre- 
sent a certain phase in the evolution of humanity: .. . all that 
exists is a fact, and every fact is what it should be, by the very 
fact that it is.’ And so the most heterogeneous elements go into 
the eclectic mortar: Epicurus and Zeno, Aristotle and Plato, Kant 
and the Sentimentalists, all find themselves forcibly reconciled. 


And now [concludes Bautain] mix it, stir it, pound it, and crush it to 
impalpability, so that nothing will be recognizable in the mixture... 
in order that there may be fusion and not confusion, and we may not 
be accused of syncretism, whereas we are making an Eclecticism. You 
will put that word on the label, and when sick minds and souls come to 
ask you for remedies for their ills, you will administer this eclectic powder 
to them in little packets. They will take one a day, until nausea ensues. 
Then you will stop! ... The remedy will have produced its effect, 
and they will be cured—probably, of philosophy.*° 


Bautain’s attitude toward the Romantic philosophy is thus curi- 
ously ambivalent. On the one hand, he is not merely an ally of 
the Romanticists for certain strategic purposes; he is, in some of 
his most fundamental conceptions, an out-and-out Romanticist. 
His vitalistic cosmology and his voluntaristic psychology are Ro- 
mantic to the core; and even his central religious doctrine of the 
limited spontaneity of the individual and his need of stimulation 
from above reminds us strangely of Schleiermacher’s “feeling of 
absolute dependence.” ‘Yet, on the other hand, as we have just 
seen, there are times when Bautain appears to think of this same 
Romantic tendency, of which he is himself so much a part, as if it 
were a peril, a curse, a thing to be fought and extirpated. At such 
times, he reminds not of Schleiermacher, but—to pursue the Prot- 
estant parallel—of Albrecht Ritschl; for, like Ritschl, he has too 
keen a sense of the peculiar genius of Christianity to attempt to 
reconcile it with its irreconcilable enemies; and, like Ritschl, he 
feels that the most irreconcilable enemy of Christianity, as of all 
ethical religions, is that form of idealistic pantheism in which good 


“ Mor. Ev. D., 313-314. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 247 


and evil become equally divine, and iniquity is justified because all 
that is, is mght. We shall be still more strongly reminded of 
Ritschl—and of Protestantism—-when we come to understand the 
motives that underlay Bautain’s crusade against the Scholastic 
philosophy that prevailed in the Catholic seminaries. 


4. Critique of Scholasticism. 

Bautain’s aversion for Scholasticism sprang originally, perhaps, 
from a certain native antipathy toward “logic-chopping”’; but it 
was immensely strengthened by his perception of the inability of 
Scholasticism to meet and refute Pantheism. It was a fact, in his 
own observation, that scholastically trained priests were unable to 
cope with the intellectual difficulties which cultured young panthe- 
ists, in increasing numbers, were bringing to them for solution; and 
so many a troubled and wistful inquirer, Christian at heart but 
intellectually perplexed, was turned away unsatisfied. In a brilliant 
passage of the Philosophie du Christianisme,** Bautain confronts 
such a priest with a young pantheist, and shows, in the ensuing 
dialogue, how Scholasticism plays into the hands of Pantheism. 

The priest begins with the traditional arguments for the existence 
of God. ‘Don’t take the trouble, I beg of you,” interrupts the 
youth. “I, with you, proclaim the necessity of the Being who is 
in Himself; and it is just because I have recognized Him as the 
only necessary being that I can see in all contingent beings mere 
modifications of His substance, more or less limited expressions of 
His nature.” Shocked at this pantheistic position, the priest replies 
that it is absurd to reduce all things to one substance; there is an 
irreducible difference between thinking substance and extended sub- 
stance. “To this Cartesian distinction the youth objects that 
Descartes’ own definition of substance (“that which subsists in 
itself”) leads to pantheism, for “only one Being subsists in itself.” 
After some inconclusive sparring about the definition of substance 
and mode, the priest returns to the argument from motion to a 
Prime Mover, which he thinks establishes the existence of a 
transcendent and extra-mundane deity. The youth replies that this 
is exactly the line of reasoning which has led him into “what you 
call Pantheism and I call transcendental philosophy.” 


“ Py, Chr., I, 168-177. 


248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Those [he continues] who from the existence of the world infer a 
cause outside the world, evidently exceed the legitimate force of the law 
of causality. . . . The effect which issued from the cause must have 
been in it before appearing outside of it. ‘The cause merely posited 
itself externally, or, as the philosophers say, it made itself its own object. 
. . . Whether it be eminenter or formaliter, ideally or really, that the 
world is in the First Cause, or the First Cause in the world, it follows 
none the less from your cosmological or teleological argument that the 
universe such as we behold it has issued from God as the effect of God 
the cause—that it is God made manifest. 


As this argument reduces the priest to a state of incoherency, the 
youth turns to the attack, and politely suggests that the dualistic 
cosmology which his opponent has been defending is, after all, 
somewhat unspiritual, and, at any rate, not in accord with the facts: 


I know of nothing inert and absolutely dead in nature [he urges]. In 
the denser bodies, in the minerals, there is a continual oscillation of their 
molecules. See the prodigious activity of the gases. . . . It is the spirit, 
you will say, which animates them, and I agree; but then what becomes 
of the sharp diiference, the essential difference, between two terms which 
penetrate each other perpetually, which unite and mingle in the same 
lifet If you regard them as opposed by nature, you take away the 
possibility of explaining their commerce . . . whether in man between 
his soul and his bedy or in the universe between God and the world. 


‘The priest now begins to utter angry reproaches. The root of 
this doctrine is human pride, he cries. The Triune God is above 
all creation. ‘The youth disclaims any intention to be impious. 
“If I must above all believe in a God who is above and outside 
of nature,” he says, “you ought not to have tried to demonstrate 
his existence to me by the forms of the world. . . . I have no 
repugnance against admitting the God of the Christians; but, in 
order to believe in him as you do, I should need either infused 
faith or a satisfactory theory of the great fact of creation. I 
should need to have the history of man, and that of Christianity, 
justified by the needs and conscience of humanity.” The priest— 
not having been trained in Bautain’s school—has no reply to make, 
and the young man goes away disappointed. 

The old apologetic then, in which everything rested upon certain 
rational proofs of the existence of God, is bankrupt; for the modern 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 249 
mind, it has lost all power to convince. Bautain is of the opinion 
that Kant has given the coup de grace to all the traditional argu- 
ments for the existence of God;** but he has certain additional 
objections of his own, particularly against the cosmological and 
teleological arguments. Not only is the cosmological argument 
invalid, but, further, if it were valid, zt would not give us the God 
Actually, it plays into the hands of Pantheism; ideally 
Here is how 


of religion. 
and at its best, it gives us only the God of the Deists. 
Adéodat puts the matter: 


Something, they say, exists; something has always existed; hence some- 
thing exists necessarily. They call that a metaphysical proof; they pre- 
tend to discover the eternity of a cause through the medium of ephemeral 
existences that have not an instant of stability! And suppose it were so, 
suppose they had proved to me that this X-God was the prime mover 
who makes spheres turn round, and that he is the power that hurls the 
planets through space and maintains them in their orbits; once more, 
what would this god mean for the need of the heart? What pledge of 
continuance and protection will he give to the desires and hopes of my 
soul’ And without these pledges of protection and continuance, what 
motive have I to make him the object of my love? ** 


Bautain never tires of reiterating the contention that between 
the God of the cosmological argument (the God of the Deists) 
and the God of Hebrew-Christian tradition, there is simply nothing 
in common. 


O my friends [he writes to his Jewish disciples at the very beginning 
of his correspondence with them], do you realize, then, that between a 
true Israelite and a deist there is the same difference as between a civil- 
ized man and a child growing up in savagery? The god of the deist is 
force, nature, fate, destiny: it is a general cause, assumed to exist because 
the reason demands a cause for the effects it perceives, . . . a gross 
image, . . . or else . . . a rational entity, an abstraction, an idol of the 
mind. . . . And that is what you would substitute for the God of Israel 
and of Moses, the living God who created man in his image, animated 
him with his Spirit, and preserves him with his Providence! * 


“For a telling use of Kant’s objec- 
tions to the cosmological argument, see 
Bautain’s letter to Riambourg, FB,K, 
Cahier I, 35. As we have seen, Bau- 
tain thinks more highly of the ontologi- 
cal, psychological, and moral arguments 


than of the cosmological and teleologi- 
cal; but he thinks they must be entirely 
recast if they are to appeal’ to the 
modern man. 

Phil Chase 122092210. 

“Tbsd., 19-21, 


250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob .. . mot the 
God of the philosophers and the savants!”—this phrase from Pas- 
cal’s amulet might be taken as the summary of Bautain’s critique 
of the cosmological argument. But the teleological argument 
escapes no better: if the cosmological argument leads to Pantheism 
or Deism, the teleological argument leads to Manichaeism. Once 
we begin to note differences of good and evil in the cosmos, we 
get, not indeed an indifferent God, cause of good and evil alike, 
but two rival deities: 


This world in which we live is but an arena, a vast battlefield, where 
all is opposition and contradiction, where life, by which nature and all 
the creatures are and subsist, is but a perpetual struggle with death.*° 

‘This world is a mixture of good and evil; in it contraries reveal them- 
selves, in conflict with one another: life and death, health and sickness, 
light and darkness, truth and falsehood, etc. Now, opposite effects 
arguing opposite causes, there are therefore two contrary causes which 
share this world between them; they are in conflict, etc. Where is the 
One, Infinite, Omnipotent God? *® 


If we were to sum up the gist of Bautain’s objections to the 
whole traditional apologetic, we should have to say that its great 
error, to Bautain, lay in the attempt to find God through Nature. 
Not that he disdains the argument from Nature altogether. We 
have already seen what large use he makes of it in his own con- 
structive system. What he insists upon is simply that it must not 
be made a strictly logical argument, else God will be dragged down 
to Nature’s level; it must be purely an argument from analogy, 
a tracing of parallels between natural and spiritual law. The 
primary argument is from man’s deepest moral need; the God of 
Man thus discovered may later be found to be the God of Nature 
also, but if we seek for Him in Nature we shall discover—the 
wrong God. “What it is important for a man to know is not 
merely the Author of Nature, the great Architect, the soul of the 
world, etc.; it is above all Ais Author, his God, the God of man; 
and‘ Nature is mute on this subject.’’** 

So far, Bautain has been criticizing Scholasticism simply for its 
maladroitness in apologetics. “The philosophy of the schools, he 


* De Vimpuissance de la raison, Rev. “FB,K, Cahier I, 35. 
Eur., IV, 63. “ Phil. Chr. 1, 194. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT Zou 


points out, is not aware that a new enemy is upon it; it is trying 
to fight with spears and pikes against guns and cannon. Here is 
Pantheism “breaking out to-day in every part of the world, be- 
leaguering, so to speak, the civilization of our time, ... and 
destined to overturn everything when it shall have conquered every- 
thing”**—and the official philosophers of the Church, like pig- 
headed old generals, not only refuse to adopt new tactics them- 
selves, but cry heresy and treason against all innovators! Why, 
cries Bautain, should a revision of tactics be considered heretical? 
The Church has always changed her apologetics to suit the times. 
Scholasticism was a much decried innovation in its day; the Carte- 
sian revision of French Scholasticism, under Bossuet and Male- 
branche, was equally revolutionary in its day; is it not high time 
for French Catholic thought once more to come to grips with 
contemporary philosophy, as German Catholic thought has already 
done? *° 

It was to this safe and sane position that Bautain commonly 
retreated when attacked by his critics; but his criticism of Scholasti- 
cism went much deeper than this. Why did the conventional 
apologetic play into the hands of Pantheism? Was it merely that 
its method of defense was outgrown, though good enough in its 
own day? No, its weakness was something worse than that: it was 
itself tainted with Pantheism. Somehow or other, in grappling 
with their antagonists, the defenders of the faith had themselves 
been overthrown and dragged down into the mud. In seeking to 
meet the human reason, and fight it with its own weapons, they 
had themselves been led into rationalism; and rationalism, thinks 
Bautain, always leads in the end to Pantheism, if not to atheism. 
All this comes out in his critique of the Philosophie de Lyon. This, 
it may be remembered, was the semi-Cartesian system of philosophy, 
couched in Scholastic Latin, which Bautain himself was ordered to 
teach in his Petit Séminaire, when suspicion began to fall upon 
him. It had been for years the standard philosophical text in most 
of the French seminaries.” 

In the first place, says Bautain, the Philosophie de Lyon is all 
wrong in its methodology. Like Cartesianism, it abstracts from 


* Thid., II, 148. © See supra, chapter 1, note 65. 
® Tbid., introduction to Letter 28. 


202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


experience and tradition altogether, and tries to spin the universe 
out of the individual reason. It has adopted Descartes’ procedure 
of systematic doubt: 


when one wishes to philosophize . . . one must abstract oneself from 
received beliefs and lay aside acquired convictions, that they may have 
no influence whatsoever upon the scientific procedure of the reason, which 
is to raise anew the edifice of knowledge; . . . one must discourse upon 
God, man, and their relations, as if God had never taught us anything 
about Himself and about ourselves... . It is as if they were told to 
give up the brightness of the day, to contemplate the spectacle of nature 
at night, by the light of a torch. And so how many of these poor young 
men when they leave the school, never recover that unsullied faith which 
had guided them from infancy. ... There happens to them, most 
often, what has happened to the whole modern world: it began by 
parting with faith to cultivate knowledge; it entertained the supposition 
that it had no faith, and, reasoning in accordance with this supposition, 
it got lost; the heart of man became filled with darkness, and then 
accustoming himself to get along without faith, he ended by having 
none.”? 


Despising faith, tradition, and experience, the Philosophie de 
Lyon absurdly exaggerates the importance of reasoning and dia- 
lectic. Its great and fundamental fallacy is to think of logic as 
an existential science, and the syllogism as an instrument of dis- 
covery.. This is the error of a// Scholasticism, which may, in fact, 
be defined as “logic applied to questions of metaphysics and 
morals.”°* Bautain wonders at the naiveté of philosophers who 
attach such magical efficacy to the mere process of ratiocination. 


You cannot believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the 
soul? It is because you have not looked at these matters logically and 
according to the rules. A good syllogism will dissipate all your doubts— 
provided you admit the premises beforehand; otherwise we must give up 
the attempt to convince you. But be assured that no one but a fool gr 
an impious person can resist the force of a valid argument.*? 


All this is absurd. “It follows from the very nature of the 
syllogism,” says Bautain, “that it is not the instrument of any 
discovery” ;°* for one must have perceived by the intelligence the 


S Phil. Chr., 1,.61-62, _, ™ Jbid., 58: 3 Thid., 66. “4 Thid., 68. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 253 


relation of the three terms before one can set it forth, and it is 
just in that intellectual intuition of the relation that the true dis- 
covery lies. “It is the insight (regard) of genius which dis- 

> 55 > 


covers ;°° the syllogism is merely a means of “exposition,” 
things forth for slower minds. 


to set 


The trouble with Scholasticism is that it has never realized the 
limitations of the reasoning process as a way to knowledge; it has 
never undertaken a “critique of the reason.” It has no means of 
undertaking such a critique; for it should be based on a knowledge 
of psychology, and how work out a good psychology when “one 
disdains the study of natural facts and is not willing to draw one’s 
philosophy from revealed principles?”°’® As a matter of fact, 
Scholasticism presupposes the wholly inadequate psychology which 
regards intellectual processes as the sum and substance of all that. 
goes on in the mind, neglecting volition and emotion altogether. 
“Tt defines man as a reasonable animal,” says Bautain, “and the 
soul as a thinking substance [Aristotle plus Descartes], because it 
is with thought and the reason that it is going to do all the rest.”°* 

Bautain is convinced that, as a general rule, Rationalism and 
Pantheism go together; and, in the case of the Philosophie de Lyon, 
he finds an instance of this rule. In this philosophy, the funda- 
mental metaphysical notion is that of Being in General. ‘This 
notion is obtained ‘‘by making abstraction from the species and 
from the individuals which limit the universal notion of being.” 
The result is a pure notion, signifying simply “the manner in which 
the mind can envisage all the existences, without dwelling on their 
properties and generic qualities.””* Being in General, that is, is 
nothing in particular: “pure negation of all that constitutes 
existence, form, quality, properties, attributes, relations, etc.”°° 
The resulting conception is extremely hard to distinguish from 
the conception of Nothing: “Being in General is what does not 
exist or what the reason conceives as not existing.”’” The effort 
is made to save a remnant of concreteness by calling Being in 
General the opposite of Nothing; but Nothing is then defined as 


® Tbid. mw Abidug 71) 
 Thid. © Ibid. 
 Thid., 65-66. * Thid. 


8 Tbid., 70. 


254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


privation of Being, which gives us a circular definition. Being 
is divided dichotomously into spiritual being and corporeal being; 
spiritual being into uncreated (God) and created, spiritual being. 
God is thus defined as a fraction of a fraction of a general notion 
signifying Nothing! Nay, it is worse than that: 


If the notion of spirit is but a distinction in the universal notion of 
Being, matter, the other distinction or second species of the same genus, 
participates in the nature of their common principle, which comprehends 
them both. Matter and spirit, confounded at their source, are therefore 
the same at bottom! ... Do you not perceive [cries Bautain] at the 
end of all these distinctions and all this confusion a gross pantheism, and 
the fatalism of the ancients with all its consequences! ®? 


Christian philosophy had become pantheistic! It was but natural 
that when this dreadful suspicion came over Bautain’s mind, he 
should proceed to attack Scholasticism with a virulence and a cru- 
sading zeal that made him a host of enemies.°’ Indeed, the situa- 
tion was alarming enough, as Bautain conceived it! Here was 
German Romanticism creeping into the veins of the French nation 
like a virus, and sapping its moral stamina. ‘The natural protector 
of morality was the Christian Church; yet when one called on 
Christianity to combat the disease of Romanticism, one discovered 
that Christian philosophy was vitiated by an even deadlier disease! 
Yes, even deadlier; for German Romanticism at least trusted the 
higher intuitions of the soul, and so arrived at a vitalistic, spiritual- 
istic type of pantheism, while Catholic Scholasticism, believing the 
reason to be the highest human faculty, deified the universe of 
mathematical space and time,** and arrived at a kind of Spinozistic 
pantheism. Small wonder then, that the Scholastic arguments for 
the existence of God made no impression on a Romanticist. They 
represented a kind of rationalistic dogmatism, a kind of naturalistic 


pantheism, which he himself had outgrown. 


© PKil. Chr, Tl, 73-74. 

® One can hardly blame Raess and 
Liebermann for resenting the implica- 
tion that the instruction at the Grand 
Séminaire was tainted with Pantheism. 
The type of Scholasticism for which they 
stood was very different from the 
Scholasticism of the Philosophie de Lyon 


—much less influenced by Cartesianism, 
and much nearer to authentic mediaeval 
Scholasticism. 

* Bautain points out that the Philoso- 
phie de Lyon (Metaphys. gen., article 
3) actually lays down the proposition 
that “space is the divine immensity.” 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 255 


How did Christian philosophy ever come to be infected with 
such a disease? That, to a man like Bautain, trained in the history 
of philosophy, was a question of great interest and importance. 
De Bonald and de Maistre argued that all the errors of modern 
philosophy were the inevitable consequence of the attempt of 
Descartes to philosophize dans un poéle, as an isolated individual 
_ mind, artificially severed from society and tradition. Bautain, too, 
felt that many of the defects of French Scholasticism could be 
traced to the influence of Descartes. ‘The pantheism of the 
Philosophie de Lyon was derived from Descartes as logically as the 
pantheism of Spinoza. 

But Bautain was not content to stop there; for he considered 
that the root of pantheism was rationalism, and Christian philos- 
ophy had become rationalistic long before Descartes. The great 
mediaeval Scholastics were themselves deeply imbued with rational- 
ism; it is to them that the attempt to find God through Nature, 
and prove his existence by purely rational arguments, is to be traced. 
Where did they get their rationalism? Surely from some pagan 
source; for rationalism is foreign to the genius of Christianity. 
Bautain claims to be able to show the exact moment at which the 
paganization of Christian thought took place. It was the moment 
when, under the double influence of the teaching of Abelard and 
the recovery of the works of Aristotle, “dialectic came gliding into 
the bosom of Christianity and into her schools.” Never was there 
such a transformation in Christian thinking in so brief a space of 
time. Logic and dialectics, hitherto despised, became a veritable 
craze; nothing could be accomplished without the use of the syllog- 
ism. Aristotle’s philosophy, censured by the early Fathers of the 
Church, became the object of “a sort of idolatry’; and, in spite 
of the opposition of Pope Gregory LX, matters had soon reached 
such a pass that ‘one was even expected to accept with deference 
every part of it, every proposition, every word. Every mind was 
to bow before the word of the Master—and yet,” observes Bautain, 
“not to mention the rest, what has become of Aristotle’s physics 
to-day?”®° 

The pernicious influence of Aristotle! That, to Bautain, is the 
source of all the troubles that have beset Christian thought from 


PPa tera ii, 11. 


256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


that day to this. If only it could have been nipped in the bud! 
If only Pope Gregory IX, and the doctores biblici, positivi, veteres 
who supported him in his attack upon Aristotelianism had prevailed 
over the doctores sententiarii et novi! But since they did not pre- 
vail, since the serpent of pagan rationalism was suffered to glide 
into the bosom of Christianity, a great reform is now necessary; 
and now, strangely enough, the reformer finds that the rdles have 
shifted, and Christian conservatism itself is on the side of paganism! 


What was new then, what was expressly disapproved by the sovereign 
Pontiff in those days, has since that time so won its way in the ecclesiasti- 
cal schools that even to-day the argumentative method is regarded as 
essential in the teaching of theology, and, in the opinion of many, it 
almost participates in the sacredness of dogma. It is the positive method 
which in our days would be declared an innovation; and what was 
ancient, and respected as such, in the twelfth century would seem a 
novelty and perhaps be rejected in the nineteenth.®® 


Precisely what was the nature of the great reform which Bautain 
hoped to accomplish? What was the “positive” tradition to which 
he here appeals, and which he contrasts with the “dialectical” 
tradition of the Schoolmen? It must be confessed that Bautain’s 
program is a bit vague. Sometimes he seems to be appealing, like 
the Traditionalists, from reason to authority; sometimes he ex- 
plicitly appeals from the Aristotelian tradition to the Platonic, from 
Abelard and St. Thomas to St. Bonaventura, St. Bernard, St. 
Augustine, and the Alexandrian Fathers; sometimes he seems to 
be contending that there is a radical inconsistency between the 
Hebrew-Christian view of God and the world and the Greek view 
of .God and the world,®’ so that even Platonism is an inadequate 
vehicle for Christian thought. At such moments the Protestant 
reader of Bautain is strongly reminded of Ritschl and Harnack, 
and their attempt to purge Christian theology completely of the 
pernicious influence of Greek metaphysics. Here, where he is in 
a sense most reactionary, most unprogressive, most anti-philosophi- 
cal, is the point where Bautain most nearly approaches the position 
of certain Catholic ‘“Modernists” like the Abbé Laberthonniére. 
Tt is by going “back to” something—“back to Paul,” “back to 


® Phil. Chr., II, 12, note. See infra, section II of this chapter. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT Petey 


Christ”—that most revolutionary movements begin. There are 
the seeds of a new Reformation in Bautain’s criticism of Scholas- 
ticism. 


5S. Critique of Traditionalism. 

The question of Bautain’s relation to the Traditionalists has 
repeatedly faced us in the course of our study. In our examination 
of Bautain’s theory of knowledge, we have frequently been tempted 
to deny that there is any real kinship between his doctrine and that 
of the Traditionalists; and yet we have been forced to admit that 
the points of agreement are too numerous and too patent to be 
overlooked. It is time now to pronounce a final judgment on this 
question; and we shall find that Bautain himself is our best witness. 
If we examine his attitude toward the philosophy of Lamennais, we 
shall find him defining his relation to the whole Traditionalist 
movement with perfect clarity. 

The readers of Bautain’s first public manifesto as chef d’école* 
must have been surprised at the vigor with which he attacked 
Lamennais. His attack upon the school of Condillac, upon the 
Scotch school and the Eclectics, and even his attack upon the 
Scholastics, were quite in the spirit of Lamennais. The Tradi- 
tionalists were in fact the chief rivals of the Scholastics in France 
at this time; and if they had not yet attacked Scholasticism as 
violently as Bautain attacked it, that was only because they had not 
perceived how rationalistic it was. Had Lamennais suspected that 
the same Cartesian rationalism which he described as the root of 
all the errors of modern philosophy was characteristic of the phi- 
losophy which was taught in the Catholic seminaries, he would 
have raised a shout, and called out all his Traditionalist cohorts. 
Yet no sooner had Bautain finished with his bitter arraignment 
of Scholasticism than he turned savagely upon Lamennais and 
condemned his philosophy on the following counts: 

1. It is not philosophical. 


It has no principle of knowledge in it, and it takes away all means 
of acquiring one, since, incessantly interposing a human authority between 
man and the facts, it shuts him off from access to them. 


® De Penseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXme Siecle. Ens. Phil. F. 


258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


It destroys the possibility of immediate certainty (évidence), since 
general testimony . . . can lead us to Je/ieve, but can in no case make 
us see. Well, what is knowledge without évidence. 

It degrades the human intelligence, made to contemplate the truth. 
. . . Imposing . . . testimony as infallible, as a supreme authority from 
which there is no appeal, . . . it attacks the most noble prerogative of 
man, his liberty, by which he has the power to grant or refuse his assent 
to that which is set before him.*® 


2. dait as not. Catholic, 


It tends to substitute for the only infallible authority, which is that 
of God, a human authority, that of common sense or the general reason. 
. . . The martyrs who, however numerous they were, were still in the 
minority in the midst of the mass of the pagans, were only fools, then!*® 


3. As an apologetic, it has no appeal for the modern man. 


It found little sympathy among men of our age, who wish évidence 
and not authority, who wish to see the truth for themselves and not 
receive it on the testimony of another. They have not considered it 
possible to philosophize by proxy, or that common sense absolved one 
from the need of knowledge, or that everybody’s reason was entrusted 
with the task of thinking for each. It was in the ecclesiastical schools. 
that it produced the greatest effect.” 


After this sweeping criticism of the man who was then recog— 
nized as the chief of the Traditionalist school, Bautain adds a 
casual note’* in which he mentions the names of certain philosophers 
in whose teachings he finds less to criticize, and with whom, one 
infers, he is in substantial agreement: de Maistre, de Bonald, 
Ballanche, Azais, and Riambourg—all ‘Traditionalists!** This 
note must have puzzled many of his readers: how could he be 
so much opposed to Lamennais, and still find himself in essential 
agreement with the Traditionalist school? No one could place 
Bautain. ‘The opponents of ‘Traditionalism classed him as a 


@ Ens. Phil. F, \ii-lviii. theless one in spirit with the émigré phi- 
” Ibid., \viii, 1x. losophers who founded the Traditional- 
7 Tbid., 1xi-lxii. ist school. Riambourg, an out-and-out 
® Tbid., \xiii. Bonaldian, was a personal friend of Bau- 


* With the possible exception of Azais, tain’s. See FB,K, for some of their 
who had a somewhat original “philosophy letters. 
of compensation,” but who was never- 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 259 


‘Traditionalist, while the ‘Traditionalists themselves became _ his 
vehement opponents. Bautain himself seems to have felt that an 
explanation of his position was imperative; and so, in a long letter 
to the Revue Européenne,* he endeavored to clear the whole 
matter up. 

In this letter, Bautain repeats his previous objections to Lamen- 
nais’s philosophy, with many amplifications; but with all this we 
have no concern. It ought to be sufficiently plain to the reader, 
by now, why it was that Bautain reacted so violently against the 
philosophy of “common consent.” To an intuitionist, a second- 
hand assurance of truth is no assurance at all. We are interested 
not in the points at which Bautain differs from Lamennais, but 
the points at which he agrees with him; and here he is very explicit. 
He lays down three clear-cut propositions, which sum up not only 
all that he has in common with Lamennais, but, incidentally, all 
that he has in common with Traditionalism: 

(1). That the human reason cannot rise by its own strength to the 
knowledge of the First Principle, or ie that of any fundamental truths. 
Principles are not “things of reason,” entities, abstractions. 

(2). That it cannot develop, as reason, without the datum of lan- 
guage, which is necessarily traditional. 

(3). That reason cannot act without principles and axioms which 


it does not create, which it cannot verify, and which nevertheless it is 
obliged to admit, under penalty of rendering itself null and void.’° 


All three of these propositions are expanded and discussed at 
length. We need not dwell upon the first and third, for we are 
familiar with Bautain’s doctrine that faith and intelligence neces- 
sarily precede reason, and furnish it with all its major premises. 
‘The second demands sharper attention. ‘The Bonaldian theory of 
language is the most characteristic doctrine of the Traditionalist 
school; and Bautain’s attitude toward this doctrine will reveal, like 
a touchstone, his whole attitude toward Traditionalism. I quote 
at some length, that I may neither conceal Bautain’s fundamental 
agreement with his contemporaries in a belief now generally re- 
garded as bizarre, nor conceal the originality of his interpretation 
of it. 


4 Lettre sur le sens commun, Rev. Eur., © Thid., 649. 


VI, 637-673. 


18 


260 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 

Reason [he says] cannot develop spontaneously and, as it were, by its 
own effort. One thinks only by means of speech and words, with the 
aid of language; and the formation of a language presupposes the most 
subtle exercise of thought. ‘This circle is found in every question of 
origin, and can be avoided only by the intervention of a superior power. 

. . Neither man in general, nor a people, nor an individual, has ever 
had the initiative in his development, nor has he ever become what he 
wanted to become: or, to put it differently, it was never his will which 
made the plan of his education or determined his original direction. 
The human race at its origin was under the immediate control of 
Providence, and received in its primitive relationship with its divine 
Author and with its creation all the 7¢dées méres, all the truths which were 
destined to serve as principles for its future science, and at the same 
time as motives for the will.“* When it swerved from this relationship, 
it was because it heard and lent an ear to amother word, a word of nega- 
tion, cf criticism, of reflection, a lying word. In the one case as in the 
other, it did nothing but react and respond freely to what had been 
Sate DOF hulk 

What is true of humanity is true of each people, and here the truth 
is yet more evident. A people does not appear suddenly on the surface 
of the earth, like a swarm of insects after a thunderstorm. There is no 
nation or people that has not its antecedents. It is either the develop- 
ment of a family, or a fraction of an existing nation which moves else- 
where, or, finally, an agglomeration of fragments of population which 
accumulate and form as it were an alluvial society. In all these forms, 
there is a language, if not several; in a language, there are traditions of 
which it is the container; there are ideas, scraps of knowledge, customs; 
and all this comes from the mother-society. . . . To imagine that peoples 
or nations constitute themselves by agreement, by deliberation, by social 
contract; to ascribe to them, in the state which people have pleased to 
call the state of nature, the reasonings, the systems, the combinations and 
abstractions of certain thinkers of modern times, is truly to feed upon 
chimeras; it is to invent society instead of studying it. A people, by 
the very fact that it is a people, comes from somewhere and from some 
one; it bears in its moral and intellectual constitution, and in its language, 
which is the expression thereof, all the principles and all the essential 
conditions of its future. 

Let these observations now be applied to the individual who is born 
and develops in the environment of an already developed society. His 


*° Cf. Durkheim on the social origin of 
the logical categories. The Traditional- 
ists and the modern sociological school 
both trace many of our fundamental 
moral and metaphysical concepts to ‘“‘col- 
lective representations”? which have come 
down to us from primitive man. The 


Traditionalists say they were dictated by 
Deity; the sociologists say they were de- 
duced from the structure of society. For 
the Traditionalists, the primitive origin 
of an idea accredits its truth; for most 
modern thinkers, quite the reverse. 


INGTHE HISTORY OR STHOUGHT 261 


spirit is immersed in the spiritual atmosphere of this society, as his body 
lives and moves in the environing air. Just as all the forces, all the 
fluids which stir in the air, press upon, stimulate, penetrate his organs 
and become modified, so the moral influences, of which the social at- 
mosphere is full, excite and develop his spiritual faculties by means of 
speech and language, which is for the life of ‘the spirit what the air 
is for the body—the bearer of light; . . . and the development of his 
spirit, like that of his body, goes on at first quite unconsciously, as a 
composite resultant of the antecedents from which he springs and the cir- 
cumstances in which he is placed. ‘That is the destiny, the fatu7, to 
which each man who is born into the world of time is exposed; and 
it is out of that fatality, the consequence of an original unlawful act of 
humanity, that his liberty must extricate itself. . . . It is to the society 
in the midst of which he is formed that man owes all the basal truths 
that he knows; they are given to him in the germ in infancy, enclosed in 
the shell of words, like seeds cast into the soil, which germinate only 
after a long time... . We say then, with the author of the Essay 
[Lamennais] that the individual reason is nothing except in relation to 
the general reason of society, to which it clings as a child to its mother. 
We say that the reason cannot exist as reason except by means of language, 
which furnishes it the necessary means for its exercise, and which, in 
giving it words, transmits to it the types of the objects which the names 
represent. ‘That is what produces what may be called the spontaneous 
education of man, the primitive and indestructible basis on which all 
his beliefs are founded. And so we regard as empty hypotheses those 
attempts at methodical doubt, those suppositions of entire ignorance, of 
a tabula rasa, of an empty understanding, which modern reason has de- 
lighted in making from Descartes to Condillac, and which they continue 
to make even to-day in the schools, under another form, when they 
attempt to demonstrate to a supposed unbeliever . . . by rational argu- 
ments the existence of God, of the soul, etc.77 


The reader will notice, I hope, that in the very act of accepting 
much that was common to all the Traditionalists, Bautain has 
assimilated it to his own most fundamental conceptions. ‘The 
formula of /:fe—external stimulus awakening internal response— 
dominates the whole. ‘Tradition does not impose itself upon the 
individual’s mind as upon a lifeless, putty-like mass; it is the at- 
mosphere in which the individual mind grows, freely selecting 
from that which is offered—to its own destruction, if it selects 
badly. Language is but the “container” of tradition, the “expres- 
sion” of the “moral and intellectual constitution” of a given 


™ Rev. Eur., V1, 642-646. 


262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


society; it is a short-hand expression for the total pressure of society 
upon the individual. We are far removed from the mechanical 
theory of de Bonald. 

To conclude, then, Bautain agrees with the Traditionalists in 
their negations, but not in their affirmations. He agrees with them 
in their anti-intellectualism, but he proposes a different substitute 
for rationalism: not blind acceptance of social and ecclesiastical 
authority, but “intelligence,” “faith,” and the ‘“‘test of works.” 
He insists upon the importance of “authority” as strongly as they— 
“for the child, it is his parents’ authority; for the disciple, his 
master’s; for the outer man and the truths which bear upon his 
self-preservation, that of society”;‘* and, we may add, in religious 
matters, that of the Divine Word of which the Church is the 
custodian—but its importance is temporary, and merely pedagogical. 
Without hearkening to some word of authority, no knowledge; yet 
hearsay knowledge, even in the religious sphere, is not the final or 
the highest type of knowledge. Faith leads to sight at last. 

If there is one member of the Traditionalist school with whom 
Bautain has more in common than with all the others, it is de 
Maistre. We saw in our Introduction how strong is the mystic 
and intuitionistic strain in de Maistre’s thought. Much that is 
central in Bautain’s theory of knowledge—his theory of innate 
ideas, for example—may have been derived directly from de 
Maistre. If his theory is broader and more philosophical than that 
of the haughty émigré, that is due to his deeper knowledge of the 
history of philosophy, and his contact with German Catholic 
thought. 

One thing more is really needed to complete our picture of 
Bautain’s relations with contemporary schools of thought: an ac- 
count of his relations with contemporary German Catholic thought, 
as represented by the school of Munich, the school of ‘Tubingen, 
the school of Bonn, etc. Here, however, we are practically reduced 
to conjecture. Bautain hardly mentions his German Catholic 
contemporaries at all; although we know that, through Mlle. 
Humann, he was profoundly influenced by them. He is opposed, 
as a matter of course, to the rationalism of Hermes and the school 
of Bonn; he thinks Franz Baader “sincerely Christian at heart,” 


8 Rev, Eur., VI, 650. 


INT THEZHISTORY OF* THOUGHT 263 


but too much taken with the ideas of Saint-Martin and Jacob 
Boehme;"* he has pleasant relations with the school of Tiibingen, 
and gets a long and, on the whole, commendatory letter from 
Moehler himself, discussing the Philosophie du Christianisme. 
That is about all we know definitely; and yet it is possible to define 
Bautain’s position in relation to these schools of thought with con- 
siderable assurance. He stands closest, I think, to the school of 
Munich, where Romanticism was most completely regnant; and 
yet, while he is more of a Romanticist than most of his Catholic 
contemporaries, he has a horror of Romantic pantheism that sets 
him off from Baader and all the school of Munich. Baader aims 
to reconcile theism and pantheism; Bautain tries to purge Christian 
theology of every vestige and suspicion of pantheism. As _ his 
French compatriots noted in Bautain a certain exotic flavor of 
German Romanticism, so his German contemporaries noted in him 
a certain French imtransigeance, which caused them to set him down 
as a reactionary and an obscurantist.°° We may say, in sum, that 
so far as contemporary influences are concerned, Bautain’s philoso- 
phy was a mixture of French Traditionalism with the Romanticism 
of the school of Munich. If this formula is insufficient to express 
the richness of his thought, it is partly because it leaves out of 
consideration his individual religious experience and philosophical 
genius, and partly because it neglects the influence of the classical 
philosophers. 


II 
BAUTAIN AS AN ECLECTIC: 
His PHILosoPpHyY OF THE History oF [THOUGHT 


We have seen how Bautain pokes fun at his former associates, 
the Eclectics, for trying, in their eagerness to find truth in every- 
thing, to make essentially irreconcilable views mix and fuse in 


would perhaps understand that, but it will 


™ Cf. supra, chapter I, note 30. 
be an enigma for most of his readers.” 


8° When Bautain’s first essays came out, 


one of his French critics (Ami de la 
Religion, LXXV, 517) accused him of 
writing in a barbarous and incomprehen- 
sible style: “The author speaks of the 
great categorical imperative; a German 


If so familiar an allusion was an enigma, 


-one hardly wonders that Bautain was mis- 


understood! On the impression which 
Bautain created in Germany, see Vermeil, 


op. cit., 115-117. 


264 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


their philosophical melting-pot. “To a man of his iconoclastic 
temper, bent on purifying the faith from all admixtures of error, 
the view that every philosophy and every epoch in the history of 
thought represents a step forward toward the truth could not but 
be obnoxious. ‘To him, there are certain philosophies which it is 
our business not to appreciate but to reject and combat with all the 
force there is in us; and there are certain periods in the history 
of thought when men, instead of progressing toward the truth, 
have wandered so far astray that it is best for us to leap over the 
whole period, and go back to the point of divagation, if we are to 
escape their errors. 

Nevertheless, there was always a good deal of the Eclectic in 
Bautain. His knowledge of the historic philosophers, acquired 
before his conversion, could hardly be obliterated; and the Eclectic 
habit of entering sympathetically into diverse points of view, and 
assimilating as much of each as one consistently could, was almost 
second nature to him. ‘The iconoclastic mood was not always upon 
him; his mission was not merely to purify Christian philosophy, but 
to restate it in modern terms, and reconcile it as far as he honorably 
could with the prevailing philosophical tendencies, as St. Thomas 
had done in his day. ‘To attempt to do this, was to use the Eclectic 
method; and Bautain was conscious of the fact. Given a criterion 
of selection, he says, the Eclectic method is excellent, and Christian 
apologists have always used it. 


In this sense and in this manner, Christianity is essentially eclectic. 
The word of Jesus Christ is sown as a seed in the world; it germinates 
there, develops, blossoms, and bears fruit in a marvellous fashion in the 
midst of pagan civilization and all the philosophical knowledge of the 
time. The Church is founded in this environment; ... and, in the 
discussion of the doctrines she meets upon her path, she accepts all that 
is not contradictory to her, and gathers in all the elements which can 
be reconciled with the truth which she proclaims. Whoever is not 
against us is for us. There is nothing in this thought of Plato which 
is contrary to the revealed word; the Church adopts it. This maxim 
of Aristotle has nothing in it contrary to dogma; the Church makes it 
her own. This precept of Stoicism is in harmony with or not in oppo- 
sition to discipline; the Church appropriates it. That is how Christ- 
ianity practices eclecticism.§+ 


*t Mor. Ev. D, 317-318. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 265 


We must not be surprised, then, to find Bautain writing a sort 
of philosophy of the history of thought and representing his own 
philosophy as the culminating stage in a process of gradual approxi- 
mation to the truth—quite like Hegel or Cousin. Philosophies of 
the history of thought were in style just then. To the Encyclo- 
pedists of the eighteenth century, it seemed that the history of 
thought could be safely neglected; one could apprehend Truth best 
by keeping one’s Reason free from the contamination of the super- 
stitions of the past, and seeing things for oneself. “To the philoso- 
phers of the early nineteenth century—radicals and conservatives 
both—this appeared to be a great error. We do not best approach 
the truth by pretending that we are the first investigators who ever 
lived; we need to study the traditions of the past, either, as Comte 
would say, to free ourselves from their errors, or, as the Tradi- 
tionalists would say, to appreciate their divine wisdom, or, as Hegel 
and the Eclectics would say, to appreciate their relative truth and 
so climb upon the shoulders of our predecessors. It was customary, 
then, for all philosophers to get a running start of at least a millen- 
nium or two before propounding the truth which was to set the 
capstone upon the philosophical structure of the ages. Bautain 
is no exception. 

There are to be found in Bautain’s writings two distinct and 
not wholly harmonious philosophies of the history of thought. One 
of these, entitled T'rwe and False Philosophy,’ is written in his 
sternest, most uncompromising mood, and painted in black and 
white, like St. Augustine’s “City of God.” The other,** which 
represents a later and maturer view, is far more conciliatory, and 
makes a place for all types of philosophy, even rationalism, on a 
graduated scale. Bautain the Traditionalist, the reformer, the 
opponent of Pantheism and Rationalism speaks in the former; 
Bautain the Romanticist, the Eclectic, the apologist speaks in the 
latter. 

Two great tendencies—so begins the essay on True and False 
Philosophy—have been struggling with each other since the be- 
ginning of human thought: rationalism and traditionalism, sophis- 


82 Rev. Eur., V, 635 et seq.; VI, 524 Psych. Exp., 1, 16 et seg.; cf. Mor. 
et seg.; reprinted in Phil. Chr., letters Ev. P, passim. 
23-26. Cf. Choses, 113-120. 


266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


tic and true philosophy. Both claim to spring from the love of 
wisdom; but the only type of wisdom which rationalism considers 
possible 1s such as the unaided human individual can acquire by 
rational reflection upon his own experience; while traditionalism 
affirms the existence of a higher Wisdom—the heavenly Wisdom 
whose praises are sung in the book of Proverbs—vouchsafed to 
favored individuals, conditioned upon purity of heart, and embodied 
in the sacred traditions of the race. So far as European civiliza- 
tion is concerned, the chief source of rationalism is Hellenic; of 
traditionalism, Hebraic. 

The Hebrew type of wisdom is not speculative and argumenta- 
tive, like that of the Greeks, but essentially practical and intuitive. 
The Hebrew sage, as Bautain points out, was not a “philosopher” 
at all; he was either a seer or else a scribe, meditating upon the 
writings which seers had left behind. 


And so [says Bautain] to prove his knowledge and his orthodoxy the 
Israelite did not resort to reasoned demonstration, to disputation. He 
cited the text, saying: “It is written.” He recounted facts in their 
natural or geneological order.** 


In other words, the only kind of philosophy known to the 
Hebrews, is a sort of philosophy of history. When a Hebrew 
seeks to inspire faith in his God, he does not argue, he recounts 
the history of his people. In the New Testament, as in the Old, 
events are the only arguments by which the belief in Providence 
is sustained; the missionary sermons of Peter, Stephen, and Paul 
are nothing but panoramas of sacred history, “‘recounted without 
commentary, without discussion, without demonstration, with no 
other proof than the exposition of the acts of Providence and the 
natural course of events itself.” ‘The Hebrew mind apprehends 
the divine in seeking to discern the meaning of history, and this 
apprehension is immediate and intuitive. “Life evidences itself 
through its activity as light does through its brilliancy.” It is 
precisely because the Hebrew does not reflect and reason that he 
is able to plumb the mystery of man’s origin and destiny. Ques- 
tions of whence and whither are questions that can never be 
solved by reasoning. 


84 Phil. Chr., I, 348. Litt ney 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 267 


Thought, like the brook, could not ascend again to its source without 
losing its way. It is not by concentrating himself within himself, by 
reflecting himself in the mirror of his inward consciousness, that man 
will recognize his primal Source, for reflection can show him only his 
momentary state of existence, and not what he was before the present 
reflection, or what he will be the next moment. It is not with the aid 
of his memories that he will explain his origin, for no creature was ever 
present at his own creation, . . . and, once more, no creature is able 
to see into its own depths; and thus man cannot know himself in himself 


or by himself.°* 


Bautain maintains, as vigorously as Ritschl and Harnack, that 
between the Greek genius in general and the genius of Judaism 
and Christianity, there is unalterable opposition. “Che Hebrew finds 
his God intuitively, in human history and the moral life; the 
Greek finds his God by a process of rational reflection upon the 
phenomena of Nature. Yet no sooner has he said this, than he 
proceeds to soften the sharpness of the contrast by pointing out 
that there is a non-rationalistic strain in Greek philosophy: the 
Pythagorean strain, which Bautain traces to Egyptian influences, 
and believes to be derived from primitive revelation. ‘The great 
and distinguishing doctrine of this Pythagorean school is the 
necessity of moral preparation for the intuition of religious truth. 


Pythagoras [says Bautain| founded the only really serious school of 
philosophy in the Occident, where conduct went hand in hand with 
speculation. His disciples had to pass through a long and painful process 
of testing . . . to free them by degrees from the prestige of the senses, 
the illusions of the imagination, the prejudices of the reason, and all 
the opinions and habits which savored of their former manner of life; 
to purify them, in order to render them capable of receiving . . . the 
announcement of certain truths unknown to the multitude, and of 
reaching at last, by illumination of the celestial ray, the contemplation 
of pure verity. . . . And so there issued from this school a multitude of 
remarkable men; . . . and even more than a century after the violent 
destruction of this school, there was not a distinguished man in Greece 
who did not participate in its spirit. . . . The Socratic school, which 
appeared long afterward, continued the work begun by Pythagoras, but 
in a manner less profound, less vigorous, and less pure.*® 


Bautain is surprisingly cool toward Socrates. He complains that 


*§ Tbid., 340. © Ibid., 355-357. 


268 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Socrates’ teaching was too largely negative and destructive, too 
dialectical in form, and too flippant in spirit, to be a means of 
moral betterment. Living in a time when the Greek reason was 
in the full luxuriance of its development, and intoxicated with the 
sense of its own powers, Socrates undertook to defend the traditional 
morality and the higher intuitions of the spirit—a serious task, 
demanding a serious mind. But Socrates, instead of putting his 
disciples through the ethical and religious discipline which alone 
could fit them for the appreciation of truths of this higher order, 
adopted the logic-chopping methods and the jesting humor of the 
Sophists themselves, and flippantly discussed the most sacred mys- 
teries in the public squares. 


His lessons [says Bautain] were almost jewx @esprit. . . . He often gave 
instruction to whomsoever he met, without demanding any preparation; 
and far from imposing silence on beginners, he questioned them endlessly, 
and provoked them to talk. He did not trouble his disciples much 
about their conduct, as the example of Alcibiades shows. In his con- 
versations, lofty truths are not announced with befitting gravity; but, 
proposed under the form of doubts and questions, they are abandoned to 
the criticism of the reason and the discussions of dialectic. . . . It is a 
polemic which always begins with a negation; it is the rational or argu- 
mentative method which thinks it cannot solidly establish the truth except 
by first destroying all that could be said to contest it or deny it. He 
brought Science out of the temples to exhibit her in the public square; 
he prostituted the Word of Wisdom to every man’s reason and imagina- 
tion, . . . making a game of the most serious thing in the world, and 
casting into the gusts of a vain polemic the profound ideas which he had 
gained in the temples, and the high inspirations which he had received 
in solemn moments of ecstasy.** 


Plato and Aristotle represent respectively the Pythagorean and 
Sophistic strains in the Socratic school. With Plato, Greek philoso- 
phy reaches its apogee: “all that the Greek genius can produce of 
grace and high nobility.”°* For Bautain, as for Emerson, the 
image of the twice-divided line is the epitome of all true philosophy. 
‘The superiority of intuitive knowledge to reasoned knowledge and 
to sense perception; the unreality of sensible objects by comparison 
with ideas and ideals; the need of moral discipline and aspiration 


Phil. Chr., I, 358-359. S$ Thid., 360. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 269 


as a preparation for the contemplation of the superior realms of 
truth: all this is Gospel to Bautain. Plato, he admits, has ‘‘more 
light than warmth and affection”; in his philosophy, “truth was 
rather contemplated and admired by the intelligence than received 
in the heart, tested, and practised”; still, Plato is to Pythagoras 
what fulfilment is to presentiment. 

Aristotle, on the contrary, is the prince of rationalism, the Past 
Grand Master of Sophistic. His system is a dull drab travesty of 
Plato’s, where the Platonic ideas, reduced to the level of rational 
entities, lifeless and unsubstantial, give a semblance of objectivity 
to a purely subjective and artificial schema. Whatever truth it 
contains it owes to its intuitive presuppositions; and yet “it does not 
know enough to lift its glance to that which dominates it,” and 
fails to recognize the existence of the realm of ideal truth from 
which it gets its premises. 


A few formulas, a few definitions, a few axioms on one side; a few 
facts and a few observations, with plenty of distinctions, on the other; 
and in between these postulates and their data, the reason with its great 
instrument, with its tri-square and its syllogistic form: that is all he 
needs, not only to ascertain the truth of science, but to construct it or 
create it, to form a system of thoughts and words, to which all truths 
as well as all realities must accommodate themselves.®® 


‘The inevitable outcome of Aristotelianism is the clipping of the 
wings of genius, the stifling of the noblest intuitions of the heart, 
and the shrinking of the horizon of the universe to the limits set 
by the dull sensual vision of the average man. ‘Or else,” adds 
Bautain, “it finds its outcome in a Critical Philosophy, whose last 
word is that man knows nothing and can know nothing; and which 
leaves him, together with universal doubt, naught but distaste for 
science and despair!”°® Such was in fact the final outcome of 
ancient philosophy. 

It was into a jaded and disillusioned world that the envoys of 
Christianity came preaching a wisdom above the wisdom of man; 
and the world, convinced of the impotence of the unaided human 
reason to reach metaphysical truth, listened and accepted. “This 
conviction of impotence,” says Bautain, “has always been, and still 


© rhid., 361-362. oO 754d:0363. 


270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


is, the first psychological requirement for profitably receiving the 
word of salvation.”*’* ‘The Apostles did not try to give rational 
explanations of their doctrines, so as to accommodate them to the 
human understanding; they boldly admitted that what was wisdom 
to them must appear foolishness to the “natural man’”—whom 
Bautain likes to identify with Aristotle’s “rational animal.” ‘They 
trusted, in the first place, to the self-evidencing power of the 
words of light and life which they uttered, and, in the second 
place, to the convincing power of their practical fruits in trans- 
forming their converts and the whole fabric of civilization. Still, 
they could not long remain without a philosophy; for now, since 
the appearance of the Divine Word in human and intelligible 
form, a genuine science of the divine was possible, and demanded 
to be formulated, for the unification of doctrine as well as for 
the convincing of unbelievers. So Christian theology was born: 
Platonic largely in form, since many Christian converts were 
Platonic philosophers; but drawing its principles and sanctions 
mainly from the Scriptures. 

The Platonic period in Christian thought—the period of Clement 
of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Augustine—seems to be the hey-day 
of true philosophy in Bautain’s estimation. But an evil day came 
when certain doctors of the Church—Abelard and Peter Lombard 
among the first—repeated Socrates’ mistake, and “descended into 
the arena, trying to repel rational arguments with rational argu- 
ments.”°* ‘Thus was born Scholasticism. 


As soon as reasoning was appealed to as a means of ascertaining meta- 
physical truth, the school of Aristotle might be expected to reappear: 
it was in fact resuscitated by a sort of fatal coincidence, both by the 
diffusion in Europe of the Arab translations and commentaries, and later 
on by the importation of the original writings. . . . Then arose an 
unprecedented infatuation for the Stagirite philosopher, and, in the full 
sense of the word, a sort of idolatry.®? 


None of the Scholastics escapes Bautain’s disfavor. The trail 
of Aristotle is over them all. For a few of them, notably St. 
‘Thomas, he professes a certain admiration; they were “men of 
rare intelligence,” he admits, and they “often took a bold leap, 


"Phil. Chr., II, 4. * Thid., 10. 8 Thid., 10-11. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT LAPT 


sustained as they were on the wings of faith”; nevertheless, he 
adds, “the logical equipage with which they were obliged to load 
themselves soon brought them to earth, and they were forced to 
drag themselves painfully along through the science of syllogistic, 
in order to arrive at the presentation of the relation of one truth 
to another under the form of a rational conclusion.”** Such a 
method could not reign forever. It soon became evident that 
reason could get out of the Scriptures and the Sentences whatever 
it chose to put in; and the disgust and uncertainty which followed 
upon this discovery led to a violent reaction against Scholasticism, 


and to the birth of Modern Philosophy. 


Here [says Bautain] occurred a new revolution in the realm of 
thought and science. So long as the old scholasticism reigned, philosophy 
and theology remained united. They both rested upon the revealed 
word, to which they appealed in the last resort, whether to establish the 
major premises of their arguments, or to confirm their conclusions. The 
first principles were saved; they subsisted in the midst of the impudent 
riot of reason, still maintained by the authority of the Church. But 
when reason, fortified by practice, had perceived that she was mistress. 
of the discussion, she tried to set herself in the place of that authority.” 


And so, carefully circumscribing the territory of philosophy, 
and separating it entirely from that of theology, Reason proclaimed 
her independence of faith. She constituted herself “judge with- 
out appeal, Sovereign Reason”®® within her chosen sphere, and 
sought her premises either “in herself” (Descartes) or “in the 
exterior world” (Bacon). ‘This divorce between theology and 
philosophy, faith and reason, was one of the most dreadful calami- 
ties that ever overtook the world. ‘““The greatest misfortune of 
our century,” says Bautain, “is that it lacks religious faith; and 
it lacks it, because faith and science have been separated, because 
they have been declared incompatible, if not contrary.”** 

Bautain is much severer in his judgment of Descartes than in 
his judgment of Bacon. ‘To be sure, he shares the general Con- 
tinental prejudice against Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism; but he admits 
the value of natural science, and freely grants that, in that sphere, 
the Baconian method works. “It is beyond all doubt since Bacon,” 


* Thid., 13-14. © Thid., 14. Thue. Use ” Ens. Phil. F, xii. 


Pe ig? THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


he writes, “that the only way to know facts is to observe them; 
that experimentation and induction are the two great methods of 
the natural sciences—and one sure thing is that the dialectical 
method counts for very little in the numerous discoveries made 
since that time.’ Natural science is no enemy of theology, in 
Bautain’s mind; the laws of nature are types of the laws of the 
spiritual world. As for the experimental method, well, it was 
after all the experience of God that Bautain was setting over 
against the abstract notion of God; mystics and intuitionists are 
all empiricists, if you permit them to define the field of experience 
widely enough. 

Descartes, on the other hand, was inaugurating a type of phi- 
losophy that was really a substitute for theology, for it was a 
comprehensive world-view based no longer on the syllogistic ex- 
position of truths received from tradition, but on the human 
reason’s analysis of itself. The danger of it was concealed at 
first, for Descartes unconsciously smuggled in traditional truths 
like the existence of God in the shape of axioms and first principles; 
but the Christian philosophers who seized upon Descartes’ method 
as a means of staying up the tottering structure of Scholasticism, 
have gradually approached the logical outcome of Cartesianism: 
Spinozism. Their God is simply the empty form of their own 
understandings, or, if they admit sense data for the reason to work 
upon, he is the First Cause of Nature. In neither case is he the 
God of religion, for the moral and religious nature of man finds 
no place in the Cartesian psychology; and in both cases he is un- 
real, for the Kantian critique has exposed the subjectivity of the 
forms of the understanding and the whole world of Nature which 
they shape. 

It would not be fair to leave the impression that Bautain is 
wholly hostile to Descartes. As an opponent of Aristotelianism 
and Scholasticism, and as a proponent of the Platonic doctrine of 
innate ideas, he has Bautain’s sympathy. Bautain only regrets that 
the Platonic tendency in Cartesianism, represented by Malebranche, 
failed to outstrip the rationalistic tendency which culminated in 
Spinozistic pantheism and the PAilosophie de Lyon. Malebranche 
is, after Plato, Bautain’s most admired master. The following 
remark indicates pretty clearly where their point of contact lies: 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 273 


To see all in God signified for him [Malebranche] to perceive the 
truth in the divine ideas, archetypes of the existences and of knowledge, 
which the intelligence can contemplate by means of a higher light. 
Those who made sport of this great man in the following century did 
not even suspect what he meant. They were incapable of understanding 


the sublime leadings of the Christian philosopher.*® 


In the essay on True and False Philosophy, the history of 
modern philosophy is only vaguely alluded to, not because Bautain 
is less familiar with modern than with ancient philosophers—on 
the contrary, he shows far less acquaintance with Aristotle, whom 
he grossly misunderstands, than with any of the modern philoso- 
phers—but because the whole purpose of the essay is to furnish 
an historical background for his polemic against rationalism in 
Christian thought. Once the historical antecedents of the Philoso- 
phie de Lyon have been made clear, this purpose is accomplished, 
and the epic of Truth and Error closes dramatically with the 
defenders of the City of God made captive by the hosts of Satan— 
and no rescuer yet in sight. “To relieve the suspense, we may 
perhaps be permitted to supply the dénotiment which Bautain prob- 
ably had in mind. The hosts of darkness are thrown into sudden 
confusion by the unexpected defection of one of their ablest men, 
Immanuel Kant, who pulverizes their mightiest engine of destruc- 
tion, known as the Reason. ‘Traditionalism and Platonism® then 
come to the rescue, and an Age of Faith is ushered in, amid 
universal rejoicings. 

One might say that Kant did for Bautain what Montaigne did 
for Pascal:*°° he led him to despair of reaching truth by the path 
of reason, and so drove him to embrace religious faith as the only 
alternative to complete skepticism. What part the study of Kant 
played in driving Bautain into that state of psycho-physical de- 
pression from which Mlle. Humann saved him, we do not know, 
but we do know that the Variétés philosophiques, the first original 


® Psych. Exp., I, 104. 

® Tn the Choses de Vautre monde, 113- 
120, the contrast between Traditionalism 
and Rationalism reappears as the contrast 
between Platonism and Rationalism. 

1 See the Dialogue with M. Sacy, 
printed among the Opuscules in all large 


editions of Pascal’s Pensées. Pascal, by 
the way, should certainly be included 
among those who most influenced Bau- 
tain. See Bautain’s answers to the Bishop 
(quoted in the Avertissement), where 
Pascal is constantly cited. 


274 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


book which Bautain produced after his conversion, deals chiefly 
with the problems raised by Kant; and we may surmise that he 
began to regain his intellectual balance when he came to realize 
that the Kantian critique, while it condemns all merely rationalistic 
metaphysics to the limbo of subjectivity, has no terrors for the 
man who believes in the existence of faculties superior to reason. 
From that time on, he thought of Kant in terms of warm admira- 
tion; and he cherished the hope that Kant might do for the whole 
world what he had done for him. 

The glory of Socrates [writes Bautain] is to have protested, in the 
name of conscience and in the name of beliefs founded on the moral 
law and on tradition, against the subtleties of the reason abandoned to 
itself; and that which in our own day has made illustrious the philosopher 
of Kénigsberg—too little known in France, in spite of the appeal made 
daily to his authority—that which gives him a genuine right to the 
gratitude of the partisans of the true philosophy, is that, in his Critigue 
of Pure Reason, he has demonstrated incontestably the impotence of the 
reason to solve definitively a single problem of metaphysics.*°* 


The epic of True and False Philosophy, while it leaves us in no 
doubt as to what Bautain’s chief antipathies and affinities are, fails 
to define his position with exactitude. It leaves the impression 
that he disagrees completely with Aristotle, the Scholastics, and all 
their progeny, and agrees completely with Plato and all his school. 
Such an impression would be erroneous. When Bautain is in his 
calmer and more conciliatory mood, he is much more discriminating 
in his appraisal of the historic philosophies; and it is in this mood 
that he makes the classification of philosophies which is first sketched 
in the little essay on The Ethics of the Gospel Compared with the 
Ethics of the Philosophers,’ and later elaborated in the Introduc- 
tion to the Psychologie Expérimentale, which forms a sort of 
preface to his whole system of philosophy. 

The basis of this classification of the philosophies is that concept 
of the evolution of life through response to more and more spiritual 
stimuli which, as we have already seen, is the central idea in 


Phil Chr s Tas. systémes de Morale, which forms a vast 

La Morale de VEvangile comparée elaboration of the preceding, the same 
a@ la morale des philosophes. In the — scheme is used, with certain modifications. 
Morale de lEvangile comparée aux divers 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 275 


Bautain’s philosophy. ‘Man, when he is born here below,” says 
Bautain, “Ss already potentially all that he can become, all that 
he . . . is destined to be in reality in the realm of time. His life 
on earth is an unfolding of his potentiality, an unfolding of his 
properties and his faculties, a continual evolution of his interior 
nature, so that he successively exposes himself outwardly, such as 
he is inwardly.”*°* Now, each faculty of man is called out in its 
turn by that stimulus in the environment which answers to its need; 
the external world takes on a different hue at each stage, according 
to the nature of the stimulus to which man is just then responding. 
“Hence,” says Bautain, “as many philosophical systems as there 
are distinct elements in man and well-marked steps in his develop- 
ment; as many pretended sciences of man as there are phases or 
forms in which he presents himself to the observer, and principal 
faculties which manifest his life.”*°* In other words, since man 
is the microcosm in which the macrocosm is reflected, a defective 
or one-sided “anthropology” or psychology immediately results in 
a defective or one-sided metaphysic. Thus all differences in phi- 
losophy can be traced to the field of psychology. “This psycho- 
logical classification of the philosophies becomes a philosophy of 
the history of thought by virtue of the law of recapitulation. 


The law which presides over the development of the human individual 
during his sojourn on earth is also that which rules over the progress of 
the species; so that humanity as a whole, nations, and societies, present 
in the course of their history the same phases and pass through the same 
periods as the individual; or rather, the individual follows necessarily 
the law of the race.*°° 


The first period in the individual and racial evolution of man 
is the period of physical development. ‘“‘At this stage,” says Bau- 
tain, “he is alive only in so far as he feels physical influences and 
instinctively reacts toward them; he exercises his taste, his discern- 
ment, his natural activity, in the sole interest of the body; he lives 
only by the body and for the body.”*°® Since physical stimuli 
occupy the whole field of his attention, the philosophy which corre- 
sponds to this stage in his development is of course Sensualism in 


18 Psych. Exp., I, 16. 1% Psych. Exp., 1, 35, note 2. 
1% Mor. Ev. P, 25. 16 Thid., 17. 


276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


psychology and Materialism in metaphysics. It is the period of the 
“lust of the flesh.” “The philosophical subject is here man at the 
first stage of his development, in his infantile state. The object 
which corresponds to this stage is the terrestrial world and all that 
relates to the needs of the animal life.”*°’ Materialism is of 
course not confined to the infancy of the race; the school of 
Epicurus has not lacked followers in all ages; materialism appears 
whenever psychology limits its attention to sense-perception (as in 
the school of Condillac) and ethics fancies that man’s soul can be 
satisfied when his senses are gratified. 

To childhood succeeds youth; to the “lust of the flesh,” the 
“lust of the eye.” Adolescence is the period when, through the 
influence of language and society, man “begins to distinguish him- 
self from objective nature, and distinguish it from himself; and 
then also,” says Bautain, “a new need manifests itself or makes 
itself felt, a new tendency announces itself: the taste for beauty.””*°* 
The youthful taste for beauty is the first step in man’s Platonic 
initiation. "The object which corresponds to this stage in his de- 
velopment is Nature no longer looked upon as a mere source of 
sensation, but “‘seen as a spectacle,”*” full of hints of the higher 
Beauty that shall later be revealed. Man’s natural philosophy at 
this period is Romanticism, in which Aesthetic values alone guide 
the imagination, and the beautiful is made the measure of the true 
and the good. Whenever this occurs, as in the time of the Renais- 
sance, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 


you will get brilliant and superficial theories, which draw man into a 
fantastic world, and keep him in a sphere full of illusions and marvels. 
. . . Hypotheses take the place of science, and virtue has dignity only in 
so far as she shows herself under a tragic or romantic form. Hence the 
egoism of imagination and vanity, when man... prostrates himself 
before the products of his genius or before the work of his hands,*”° 


Next comes the critical period of the development of reason, 
closely associated with the development of the sense of justice, or 
practical reason. ‘“‘Reason,” says Bautain, “stops the fougue of 
the imagination, tempers its fire and brilliancy. Images, just now 


™ Psych. Exp., I, 18. ™ Tbid., 20. 
8 Ibid., 19. 9 Mor. Ev. P, 21. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 227 


so seductive, lose their color: disenchantment commences; and 
hardly has man lent an attentive ear to the dictates of reason, 
before he acquires the consciousness of a new need, more noble 
and more general than the preceding: the need of order, of 
justice, or of moral beauty.”*** Man is here on the boundary-line 
between two worlds and two selves, one phenomenal and empirical, 
the other transcendental. “The reason is the highest empirical 
faculty; the moral sense is the first hint of man’s superior nature, 
which puts him in touch with a superior world. 


If a man or a people, arrived at the age of reason, still leans toward 
the inferior nature, the reason will be regarded as the noblest attribute 
of the human creature, who will be defined as a “‘reasonable animal.” 
If, on the contrary, one is sufficently extricated from matter to lift one’s 
glance toward the spiritual world, animality will appear as an accidental 
degradation, and it will be said of man that he is an “‘asimalized 
feqsome)1*? 


In the former case the result is Aristotelianism; in the latter 
case, Stoicism. ‘The Aristotelian ethics, according to Bautain, 
represent a compromise between man’s animal and rational nature, 
whereby extremes of devotion and self-abnegation are as much 
excluded as extremes of animal passion. ‘“The perfection, the 
wisdom of man,” according to this system, “will consist in obeying 
at once the laws of animality and those of reason . . . that is to 
say, he will satisfy the beast as much as he can without disturbing 
and degrading his reason.”*** Stoicism, on the other hand, tends 
to “divide man within himself and lift spirit above matter, reason 
above animality,’*** for which reason Bautain regards it as the 
highest possible form of rationalism. 

Both Aristotelianism and Stoicism suffer from the original vice 
of rationalism: subjectivism. Acute self-consciousness is the chief 
characteristic of the critical period that separates youth from man- 
hood. ‘Thought is no longer inspired by the sight of the external 
universe, but rather by reflection upon the phenomena of the world 
within; it becomes abstract instead of pictorial. Man “identifies 


MM Psych, Exp., I, 21. "8 Tbid., 35-36. 
12 Mor. Ev. P, 34-35. M4 Thid. 


278 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


the Ego with the non-Ego,”**’ he “makes himself his own object, 
subject-object,”**® proclaiming his absolute spontaneity and absolute 
autonomy in the face of all the facts that proclaim his absolute 
dependence on external stimulation and guidance. In epistemology, 
he makes his own reason the measure of possible reality; in ethics, 
he makes his own individual will and judgment the test of what 
is right; in politics, he proclaims the sovereignty of the people— 
which implies the power of human reason “to found the principle 
from which all law, all justice, derive.”**’ All this goes to show 
that we are now in the period of the “‘pride of life’—as deceptive 
in its way as the lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh. 

Pride goeth before a fall; and dogmatism, when pushed too far, 
leads to skepticism. The effort to deduce the universe from the 
constitution of one’s own reason, and the effort to found ethics 
and politics on rational principles laid down by the legislating self, 
are doomed to failure. A jangling of opinions breaks out, that 
soon leads to despair. Morals and institutions and the universe 
itself, all seem to begin to crumble. But skepticism is only a 
passing phase. 


It breaks down with the rationalism of which it is the final consequence, 
as soon as man recognizes that Being, the source of good, and the mys- 
terious law promulgated in the conscience do not fall within the sphere 
of the senses, and thus can no more be demonstrated to the reason than 
they can be refuted by it. . . . If man denies the truth of Being and 
the Good, he is no longer skeptical, nor reasonable; he is senseless 
(insensé); that is to say, void of any sense for things ethical and divine. 
If he believes in goodness and in the conscience, although conscience and 
goodness cannot be demonstrated to him, he is no longer either a 
rationalist or a skeptic: he is a Jeliever, in spite of his reason.218 


Meanwhile, if man’s development is not arrested, there have 
been dawning upon him the first intimations of a higher nature 
and a higher world. ‘The stage of reason is, in fact, not a stage 
but a boundary-line. ‘Reason ... is not an essential element 
of the human being at all; it is not even an absolute or necessary 
property; it is only a temporary modification, a mode of being of 
the mind. It holds a middle place between the senses and the 


™° Psych. Exp., I, 37. OS hid, 323 “7 Ibid.. 39. 8 Mor. Ev. P, 42-43. 


INDI BE HISTORY) ORs tHOUGHT 279 


imagination, which it ought to govern, and the intelligence and 
will, which it ought to obey.”"* Through the sense of justice 
which is associated with it, it leads man to suspect the existence of 
a higher world; it cannot bring him into contact with it. Love 
and intelligence are the higher prototypes of which justice and 
reason are but shadows; they lead man, if he will yield himself 
to their guidance, above the realm of phenomena into the realm of 
Truth. First comes “fa sort of vague faith in the existence of a 
superior world . . . in which beauty, truth, and goodness must 
dwell”; then faith gradually becomes sight, and man has arrived 
at the “third degree of the Platonic initiation,” or the “philosophy 
of intelligence.”*”° 


Here the subject lifts his glance above himself and the world, toward 
the celestial regions in which he seeks his object. That object is eternal 
Wisdom, manifested in the world of the intelligences; it is the ideals 
which live in this world and are reflected in the purified human under- 
standing; and the scientific theory of the idea, the product of this 
reflection of the intelligence, constitutes /dealism, Spiritualism, Pantheism, 
in the true sense of this word.**! 


The word “Pantheism” should be sufficient warning to us that 
Bautain has not yet reached the top of the ladder; for Pantheism, 
as we have seen, is his béte noir. It is worthy of note that he 
applies the term not only to the Rationalism he detests, but also to 
the Platonism he admires, and to the post-Kantian Idealism whose 
relation to Platonism he recognizes'*"—to everything, in sum, which 
falls short of the supreme philosophy, Christianity. 

But in what respect does Platonism fall short of Christianity? 
Bautain’s criticism at this point is much less incisive and much more 
friendly. ‘One is often astonished,” he remarks, “in reading the 
works of Plato, and above all those of the neo-Platonists, such as 
Jamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus, etc., to find in their language so 
great a resemblance to Christian language.”*** Plato even had a 
presentiment of the Fall of Man. But neither he nor his followers 


9 Thid., 43. the relation of modern idealism to the 
™ Psych. Exp., 1, 26. ancient idealism of Pythagoras, Plato, 
121 Thid. and Neo-Platonism.” FB,V3, § 24. 

™ Cf. the following marginal note on 18 Psych. Exp., I, 43. 


manuscript lecture on Idealism: “Show 


by 


280 THE PHILOSOPHY ‘OF BAUTAIN 


seem to have been conscious of man’s radical inability to reach 
perfect knowledge and the perfect virtue which is its condition on 
his own initiative. 


He recognizes well enough [says Bautain] that man is born blind to the 
true light, and that he cannot see it unless his interior eye is opened and 
purified; but he seems to believe that this depends solely upon the will 
of man, and that he has only to direct his desire toward the Truth to 
obtain the evidence of it at once. It is not by active purification, or by 
speculation or intuition; in a word, it is not by his own activity that man 
can enter into the ways of Wisdom. Wisdom must come to meet him; 
she must touch him with a ray of her light; she must solicit him and 
attract him “par le fond,”?**4 


The beginning of all true philosophy is a sense of imperfection, 
a sense of the need of exterior aid; in short, “humility of heart.” 
This granted, the way is open for a type of philosophy whose 
object is “no longer the wisdom of the flesh or the senses, the 
wisdom of thought or of one’s own mind (secular, worldly, 
temporal, human wisdom, in fine), but divine Wisdom, ideal and 
prototype of all wisdom, universal Beauty, mother and model of 
all particular beauty, source of all virtues, which, at every step 
in the spiritual development of man, is always, whether he knows 
it or ignores it, the object of his love and the end of his seeking.”*”° 
What the Greeks sought under the name of Sophia, the Hindus 
under the name of Swadah, the Hebrews under the name of 
Chochmah, the Christian possesses: the divine Verbum, presented 
in the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church, enlightening 
man fully on those ultimate mysteries of his origin, nature, and 
destiny, which even Plato barely glimpsed. 

Arrived at this high point, we can perceive at once the unity 
and the diversity of philosophy. In its ideal and true form, “phi- 
losophy is one: for it grows out of a single Idea, as the tree grows 
out of a seed.”'*® But in its temporal development, it presents 
itself in several phases, like the tree; and each of these phases is 
a partial manifestation of the complete truth, as each phase in the 
tree’s development is a partial realization of all that it is destined 
to become. And each step in the development of the thinking 


4 Psych. Exp., I, 42. 16 Thid., 29. 
pad (8 keds 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 281 


subject is called out by some new external stimulus: “Thus the 
action of light upon our eye gives us the consciousness of our 
faculty of vision; . . . the human word gives us the consciousness 
of our faculty of conceiving the meaning of the word, of thinking 
it and judging it,”**? 
Word, we shall know nothing of things divine. ‘The necessity 
of external stimulation at each step may be seen from the following 
schematic representation of the whole process of development, 
which sums up Bautain’s whole philosophy of the history of 
thought: 


and unless we open ourselves to the Divine 


Relation 
Between sensual man and the sensible world; 
Between the imagination of man and the world of images; 
Between reasonable man and the rational world, the sphere of thought 
and opinions. 
Then relation 
Between moral man and society governed by the moral law; 
Between intelligent man and the intelligent world; 
Finally, between the soul of man or spiritual man desiring and loving 
eternal Wisdom, and Wisdom giving Itself to man.1*8 


In short, Christianity alone has the complete philosophy, because 
it alone is the product of the whole of Reality reflected in the 
whole of the nature of man; all other philosophies are partial 
philosophies, because the product of part of reality reflected in part 
of man’s nature. Metaphysics and Psychology advance side by 
side; a limitation in one is a limitation in the other. 

Bautain makes only a sketchy application of this scheme to the 
history of philosophy. Since he admits that all types of philosophy 
have had their day more than once in the history of thought, it is 
clear that he does not look upon the whole history of thought as 
a single process of development from “childhood” to “maturity”— 
particularly since he considers Mediaeval and Modern Philosophy 
to be inferior to the philosophy of the first Christian centuries. 
His view seems to be that the Western world has gone through two 
great philosophical cycles. The first culminated in the triumph 
of Christianity, for which Skepticism and Platonism, each in its 


Pl bid 3. that this is an elaboration of Plato’s 
18 Thid., 29-30. The reader will note twice-divided line: 


282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


fashion, prepared the way; and it ended when the barbarian in- 
vasions made it necessary to reéducate the race. The “rationalism” 
of the Middle Ages should not deceive us; it was not the genuine 
rationalism of maturity, but a sort of premature, adolescent ration- 
alism. “Like big children,” he says, “the men of that time rea- 
soned by imitation and from memory; argued on imaginary ques- 
tions, for the pleasure of winning a victory over their enemies.”’!”® 
Real rationalism did not develop until the Reformation, and found 
its appropriate habitat among the hard-headed, practical-minded 
English. France became rationalistic only by forced imitation, 
contrary to her character and genius. ‘Ihe second great cycle is 
just about to culminate, thinks Bautain. ‘The criticism of Kant 
and the Platonism of the Idealists and Eclectics have produced just 
the right combination of humility and expectancy; if Christian 
philosophy can be purged of pagan Aristotelianism and adjusted 
to modern ideas, it may win the world again as it did in the first 
Christian centuries. 

Bautain frequently compares his own period to that of Clement 
and Origen. A “new Alexander,’ Napoleon, has arisen out of 
the anarchy produced by skepticism and rationalism. ‘Then, in the 
period of renewed liberty that has followed the removal of the 
conqueror’s yoke, reason, repenting of her excesses, has tried to 
recover herself by taking a more spiritual form in the Eclectic 
philosophy—as of old, at Alexandria. But doubt pursues her, and 
the manifold systems of the day compass their mutual destruction. 
And now, as in the ancient. world, Faith begins to make herself 
heard in the silence that ensues upon the futile strife of systems: 
Chateaubriand, Walter Scott, Manzoni, Lamartine, Sylvio Pellico. 
It is no time for argument, for men are sick of arguing. ‘Make, 
rather, an appeal to Faith in a spirit of faith, and she will answer 
you: for Faith is everywhere awake now, and awaits only a 
stimulating beam of light to develop and vivify all hearts.’*° A 
note of Apocalyptic expectation pervades the earlier writings of 
Bautain; the times are fulfilled, and the Age of Faith, whose 
herald he feels himself to be, is at hand. In his later writings, 
this gives way to a tone of pessimism. Having failed to embrace 


1® Mor. Ev. P, 37. ™ Phil. Chr. I, xii. The words are 
Bonnechose’s; but the ideas are Bautain’s. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 283 


Christianity, philosophy is about to revert to materialism, following 
in the train of the left-wing Hegelians;*** and so, Sisyphus-like, 
must begin again at the foot of the hill of knowledge. 

We have spoken as if there were a certain inconsistency between 
Bautain’s two philosophies of the history of thought. ‘There is 
indeed a wide difference of mood and attitude between Bautain 
the reformer and Bautain the apologist. As reformer, he seems 
to be making war upon all secular philosophy, and heading straight 
for obscurantism; as apologist, he seems to look with kindly favor 
upon pantheism itself, and it lacks but little of being Christian in 
his eyes. Yet is not this the perpetual problem of the religious 
thinker? On the one hand, it is his task to discriminate between 
the native essence of his religion and those foreign admixtures 
which threaten to obscure and vitiate it. On the other hand, he 
must make these central truths intelligible to his contemporaries 
by expressing them in current categories, and taking to himself as 
much of contemporary thought as he honestly can. ‘These two 
tasks, apparently conflicting, are really supplementary; both efforts 
must be pushed to the limit, if either is to be accomplished. Syn- 
cretism and provincialism, complete assimilation and complete 
fossilization, must equally be guarded against, as the history of 
Reformed Judaism shows. If Bautain failed to commend Christ- 
ianity adequately to his contemporaries, it was not because he was 
jealous of certain central truths, which he sought to disengage 
from all sorts of “pagan” contaminations, but because he did not 
carry far enough his search for the real “essence” of Christianity. 
A recent critic’? has remarked that the Modernist movement in 
the Catholic Church failed because it was not radical enough. 
Instead of going back to Paul, as the Reformers did, or to Jesus 
and the prophets, as modern liberal Protestants are doing, it went 
back only to—Plotinus. ‘The same is true of Bautain. If at 
times he seems to feel that there is something deeper in the primi- 
tive Hebrew-Christian tradition than can be expressed in terms of 
Greek philosophy, in the end he is content to be a neo-Platonist."” 


181 See Mor. Ev. D, 334-335. ernists as one who clearly perceives the 
12 Heiler, Wesen des Katholizismus. radical incompatibility between the Greek 
18 The Abbé Laberthonniére stands out view of God as the timeless, changeless 
almost alone among the Catholic Mod- essence of things, and the Hebrew view 


284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Christian neo-Platonism, modified by the influence of Pascal, 
Malebranche, and Kant; combined with French Traditionalism 
and German Catholic Romanticism; enriched with concrete data 
from biology and psychology: such is our final formula for 
Bautain’s philosophy. 


III 
BAUTAIN’s INFLUENCE UPON THE SUBSEQUENT HIsTORY OF 
FRENCH CATHOLIC THOUGHT 


The history of French Catholic philosophy in the nineteenth 
century falls into three main periods. In the first period, which 
extends through the year 1840 (the date of Bautain’s recantation), 
the Traditionalist philosophy is dominant. ‘The second period is 
a period of transition. It may be said to terminate in 1879 with 
Leo XIIT’s adoption of Thomism as the official philosophy of the 
Catholic Church.*** In it, Traditionalist tendencies still persist, 
and it takes a series of official decrees, ending with the condemna- 
tion of Ubaghs and other Louvain professors in 1866, to crush 
out the movement finally. In the earlier part of the period, 
Platonic and Romanticist influences seem to predominate, express- 
ing themselves in the “Ontologist”” movement, and in various in- 
tuitionistic and voluntaristic tendencies; in the latter part, ration- 
alistic and neo-Scholastic tendencies come rapidly to the fore. In 
the last period, neo-Scholasticism, fostered by the patronage of 
Leo XIII, becomes theoretically the only orthodox philosophy; 
but, under plea of apologetical exigencies, a very vigorous neo- 
Romanticist movement continues to carry on the intuitionism and 
voluntarism of the preceding period, until it finally culminates 
(and is crushed) in the Modernist controversy. 

Bautain’s philosophy is interesting, not only in itself, but as an 


epitome of all the conflicting tendencies of the century. 


of God as the overruling Providence that 
is guiding the course of history, the 
“Power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness.” See his Réalisme chrétien 
et idéalisme grec. Bautain, and most of 
the Modernists, even though they see a 
certain contrast between Hebrew “tradi- 
tionalism” and Greek “rationalism,” come 


In him 


back eventually to the Platonic way of 
looking at things. For an illustration of 
Bautain’s underlying Platonism, see his 
views on the unreality of time and change, 
pp. 131-134 supra. 

™ Encyclical Zterni Patris, Aug. 4, 
1879. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 285 


the Traditionalist movement ripens and begins to wane; through 
him the influence of German Romanticism, with its revival of 
Platonism, begins to be effective in French Catholic circles; in his 
semi-Aristotelian Vitalism, finally, there is foreshadowed one of 
the most fruitful tendencies of contemporary neo-Scholasticism. 
Standing at the confluence of two civilizations, in cosmopolitan 
Strasbourg, and at the turning-point of the century, he combined 
Into a single system the ‘Traditionalism of the French Catholics 
and the Romanticism of the German Catholics, and thereby helped 
to redirect the whole current of French Catholic thought in the 
latter part of the century. How extensive was his influence, one 
realizes only when one comes to trace the subterranean channel 
through which it operated. 

I do not refer primarily to his influence upon the dying Tradi- 
tionalist movement, with which his name is exclusively associated 
in most people’s minds. As we have seen, the central ideas of 
his philosophy are Platonic and Romanticist, not Bonaldian. His 
alliance with the school of de Bonald, de Maistre, and Lamennais 
was hardly more than a strategic alliance, springing from a com- 
mon hatred of rationalism and all its works. He proved a power- 
ful ally, to be sure; for, with his professional knowledge of the 
history of philosophy, he was able to trace the rationalistic strain 
in Catholic thought back beyond Descartes to the great mediaeval 
Scholastics, and ultimately to Aristotle; and so from that time 
on, Augustin Bonnetty and other Traditionalists were accustomed 
to point to the victory of the doctores sententiarii over the doctores 
biblict in the eleventh century, when the craze for Aristotelian 
dialectics swept all before it, as the beginning of the rationaliza- 
tion and “paganization” of Christian philosophy. But if Bautain 
lent powerful weapons to the Traditionalists, in their attack upon 
rationalism, he gave no aid or comfort to their obscurantistic 
tendencies. The role of tradition in his theory of knowledge is 
purely pedagogical: it does not override the intelligence of the 
individual; it helps to develop it. It was in this modified form 
that the Traditionalist position was set forth by Ubaghs, Laforét, 
and other Louvain professors, who proved to be its last defenders. 
It is hard to see why this form of Traditionalism should ever have 
been condemned; it is not at all inconsistent with a sane respect 


286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


for the human reason, and all the facts of social psychology are 
in its favor. | 

‘The real successors of Bautain are not, however, to be sought 
among the Traditionalists; they are to be sought among those who, 
in the above-mentioned period of transition, were the great adver- 
saries of the ‘Traditionalists: those to whom Ferraz gives the 
misleading name of “semi-rationalists,” but who are better de- 
scribed as intuitionists and voluntarists. “Che leaders of this group 
were two men who might fairly be described as unavowed disciples 
of Bautain: the Abbé Maret and Father Gratry. 

Ferraz has traced in some detail the influence of Bautain upon 
the philosophy of the Abbé Maret. He points out that Maret’s 
Essai sur le Panthéisme (1840), the work which first brought him 
fame, is directly inspired by Bautain’s Essai sur le Panthéisme, 
printed as a Supplement to Letter 29 in the Philosophie du Christ- 
ianisme, and by Isidore Goschler’s thesis, Du Panthéisme, which 
appeared just a year before Maret’s essay. “The main contention 
of this essay is one of Bautain’s main contentions: that “reason, 
separated from revelation and abandoned to itself?**’—“‘reason 
alone,’ in other words—always ultimately leads to pantheism. 
Again in his Théodicée chrétienne ou comparaison de la notion 
chrétienne et de la notion rationaliste de dieu (1844), Maret takes 
the position that the human reason is capable of proving the exist- 
ence of God and the infinity of His perfections “only in case it 
[the reason] has developed in a Christian mzlieu, and under the 
influence of external instruction.”**® Ferraz thinks, however, that 
in his Philosophie et Religion, published in 1856, Maret has 
abandoned his Traditionalism and has come completely over into 
the camp of the Rationalists. This is a half-truth: Maret has 
abandoned his ‘Traditionalism—by 1856 it had already become 
dangerous doctrine, and only a few “‘bitter-enders” were still hold- 
ing on—but he has not become a “rationalist,” in any sense which 
would distinguish his philosophy from that of Bautain. He has 
simply shifted his emphasis from the negative to the positive side 
of Bautain’s teaching, and brought to the fore Bautain’s doctrine 
that man has within him a hierarchy of innate ideas—of which 





85 Ferraz, 364. 8 Ferraz, 367. See the préambule to 
Maret’s book. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 287 


the zdée-mére is the Idea of Being—which, when fully brought 
to consciousness, give him the faculty of knowing God (and the 
world of the divine ideals) directly and intuitively. Of this doc- 
trine Ferraz says: “It is rationalism pushed to the point of teach- 
ing that intuition of the Being of Beings is possible: in a word, 
ontologism”’;**’ and it is because he conceives ontologism to be 
“completely opposed” to Bonaldian Traditionalism that he supposes 
Maret to have executed a complete volte-face between 1844 and 
1856. Now, ontologism zs completely opposed to Bonaldian Tradi- 
tionalism, but it is an integral part of Bautainian Traditionalism. 
It may therefore be boldly affirmed that the Abbé Maret, in his 
whole philosophical pilgrimage, never moved outside the circle of 
ideas marked out by Bautain. 

The same may be affirmed of Father Gratry—due allowance 
being made for his real originality, which is to be found not in 
his philosophical ideas themselves, but in the wealth of poetical 
imagination with which he developed and illustrated them, and 
in the humanitarian passion which he breathed into them. He was 
a poet, a social idealist, and a saint, not a philosopher; and he 
never would have formed a system if he had not found one ready- 
made, in the neglected works of Bautain. Perhaps he was un- 
conscious of his plagiarism; in composing his works he was accus- 
tomed to rely upon bursts of inspiration, and he was unwilling, 
like most mystics, to acknowledge that inspirations which felt so 
divine could have any human source. His efforts to throw the 
public off the trail, however, by altering Bautain’s terminology and 
by attacking traditionalism and fideism in the name of “reason,” 
would suggest a more conscious plagiarism. In his Souvenirs de 
jeunesse, Gratry speaks very bitterly of Bautain; we are always 
bitter against those whom we know we have wronged. Bautain, 
on his part, never raised his voice to expose the plagiarism; perhaps 
he was glad to have his ideas propagated, even under false colors. 
For the rest, Gratry’s philosophy deserves the popularity it achieved; 
the pupil far outshone the master in brilliancy of style and lucidity 
of exposition. What is more, he had tact. Bautain always put his 


187 Thid., 371. “Ontologism” gets its is usually traced to the influence of Ros- 
name from the prominence given to the mini and Gioberti; but I believe it should 
“idea of Being.” Its popularity in France be traced to Bautain instead. 


288 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


ideas in a form that shocked people’s sensibilities and aroused their 
opposition; when Gratry set forth the same ideas in other words, 
he was loudly applauded, and elected to the Académie Francaise. 

We cannot here go into a detailed comparison of Gratry and 
Bautain, to prove our point. ‘The reader may convince himself 
of Gratry’s extensive dependence upon Bautain by glancing through 
Ferraz’s lucid and sympathetic exposition of Gratry’s philosophy, 
where many of the parallels between master and disciple are pointed 
out.*** We should merely like to clear away one illusion, which 
Gratry deliberately creates, and to which Ferraz unsuspectingly 
falls victim: the illusion that, in loudly championing the cause of 
“reason,” and in blaming those who claim that reason cannot prove 
the existence of God,’ he is really departing from Bautain’s 
position. Not at all; he is merely changing Bautain’s terminology. 
Whereas Bautain distinguished between two faculties, reason and 
intelligence, Gratry distinguishes between two types of reasoning, 
““deduction” and “dialectic,” which correspond exactly to Bautain’s 
“synthesis” and “analysis.” He agrees perfectly with Bautain in 
maintaining that discursive reason can never prove the existence 
of God; and if he maintains that “reasoning” can prove it, it is 
only because he calls zmtuition (“dialectic”) a species of reasoning, 
and works out on this basis an elaborate “dialectical logic,” 
buttressed with formidable mathematical analogies. Bautain had 
worked out a “logic of the intelligence” along similar lines. This 
misunderstanding once dispelled, it becomes evident that Gratry 
was no more of a rationalist than Bautain. If he did not attack 
the “rationalists,” he attacked the “‘sophists”——-and meant the same 
thing. He was an intuitionist, a mystic—yes, and a voluntarist or 
semi-pragmatist as well—for it was a fundamental point with him 
as with Bautain, that “the soul has two wings to lift itself to God, 
dialectics [Bautain’s intelligence| and love”;**° and of the two, 
love is the stronger. “The méthode morale must be joined to the 
méthode dtialectique, if we are to be true metaphysicians. ‘The 
heart has reasons which the head knows nothing of. 


*8 See Ferraz, 373-431; especially 376- Translated by Alger under the title Guide 
377, 406-415. to the knowledge of God, Boston, 1892. 
™® See Introduetion to his Philosophie. Crowned by the Academy. 
De la connaissance de Dieu, Paris, 1853. Ferraz, 406. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 289 


Gratry survived Bautain by only five years; but the “Strasbourg 
philosophy” did not die with him. Its influence continued to be 
active through the teaching and writing of Léon Ollé-Laprune, 
a follower of Gratry,’** professor of philosophy at the Ecole 
Normale. A sane and cautious thinker, he was guilty of none of 
the extravagancies of Bautain and Gratry; but that he belongs in 
the same stream of thought is unquestionable. His fundamental 
thesis has been well stated by his disciple Maurice Blondel: 


Knowledge (even philosophical knowledge) and certitude (even 
rational certitude) are not ideas of the pure understanding and the pure 
reason. Belief is an integrant element in knowledge, as knowledge is 
an integrant element in belief itself; that is to say, the /ife of the mind 
is always an organic part of the life of the creature; that is, philosophy 
is at one and the same time an affair of the reason and an affair of the 
soul; that is to say, finally, that thought is no more sufficient for a life, 
than a life is able to find in itself its own light, strength, and total law. 
“We must not see nothing but reason in man, and nothing but man in 
Peasonn ss 


‘ 


I add one decisive quotation from Ollé-Laprune himself,'** 
given in this same article of Blondel’s: 


The true philosopher thinks with his entire soul and also—let us 
speak bluntly—with his body; he thinks with his whole being. . . . He 
thinks, by resting upon the ground which upholds him, by remaining in 
contact with humanity of which he forms a part, in contact with the 
living and the dead; the thought of others, the thought of the human 
race, thanks to language and tradition, are present to him and enter into 
his substance. He thinks, finally, attached to God, the Principle, the 
Support, the Light and Rule of all thought. . . . That a man should 
go out on the quest for truth with a mutilated soul, is something I 
cannot understand.1*#4 


Since the death of Ollé-Laprune in 1898, the current of thought 
which we have been tracing has broadened and deepened percepti- 


*) Houtin (Histoire du Modernisme 8 This is from his remarkable book 
catholique, 11) refers to Ollé-Laprune’s entitled De la certitude morale (9th ed., 
philosophy as “une philosophie ... re- Paris, 1924); see also his more popular 


nouvelée de Malebranche et de Gratry.” , book, Le prix de la vie (4th ed., Paris, 
“2 Revue polit. et litt., 4th series, XII, 1923). 
wiz. “4 Revue polit. et litt., 4th series, XII, 
218. 


290 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


bly, and in conjunction with many other influences, has helped to 
initiate several important contemporary movements of thought— 
notably the Catholic Modernist movement of 1898-1908, and the 
great anti-intellectualist movement which in English-speaking 
countries expressed itself in the Pragmatism of James, Schiller, 
and Dewey, but which was something far more complex and 
widespread than the term Pragmatism now connotes. In this most 
recent period, as once before in the days of the “Strasbourg school,” 
we shall find the Bautainian philosophy represented not by isolated 
thinkers like Ollé-Laprune, passing on the torch in comparative 
obscurity, but by a whole group of collaborators: the school of 
the “Philosophy of Action.” 

The founder of this school was Maurice Blondel, whom we 
have already cited as an enthusiastic disciple of Ollé-Laprune. His 
remarkable book, L’Action: Essai @une critique de la vie et @une 
science de la pratique, published in 1893, is based squarely on 
Ollé-Laprune’s thesis that the will has primacy over the intellect 
in matters of metaphysics; but although the thesis was not a new 
one, the skill with which Blondel worked out his ‘“‘dialectic of 
the will’ was something new and interesting in the eyes of many 
professional philosophers, who had hitherto been inclined to dismiss 
Ollé-Laprune with a shrug of the shoulders. Fouillée, comment- 
ing on Blondel’s philosophy, whose affinity with his own he early 
perceived, said that he believed the work of the twentieth century 
would be the formulation of a philosophy of action which should 
correct the intellectualistic emphasis of previous centuries. Bout- 
roux, speaking at the Philosophical Congress of 1900, said that 
he believed a science of action to be as legitimate as a science of 
knowledge; in the science of action, many things that were rightly 
excluded from the science of knowledge might properly be con- 
sidered, and questions of religion, conscience, will, and faith were 
quite in order. Milhaud, writing in the Revue philosophique in 
1902, said that he felt Blondel’s philosophy of action represented 
a sort of new positivism, a fourth stage that went beyond Comte’s 
third.**? Meanwhile, Blondel had become the center of a group 


“© For the early history of the move-* articles by de Sailly cited in the next 
ment, and the attitude toward it of paragraph. 
Fouillée, Boutroux, and Milhaud, see the 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 291 


of liberal Catholic thinkers—among whom the names of Le Roy, 
Wilbois, Fonsegrive, and the Abbé Laberthonniére deserve particu- 
lar mention—and his philosophy, in their hands, was constantly 
penetrating new territory and coming into manifold relations with 
contemporary science, philosophy, and theology. In the years 
1900-1906, its popularity and its influence grew by leaps and 
bounds. The Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, under the edi- 
torship of Laberthonniére, became its avowed organ; the Revue 
de Métaphysique et de Morale printed articles by Blondel, Le Roy, 
Wilbois, and others, expounding the position of the school; and— 
crowning stroke—Brunetiére, the eminent literary critic, converted 
to Catholicism late in life, devoted his last years to the defense 
of religious faith in terms of the Philosophy of Action. 

‘The wide ramifications and ambitious program of the Philosophy 
of Action at this time of its greatest influence are well indicated 
in a series of expository articles by B. de Sailly, which appeared 
in the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne in volumes 151-153 
(years 1905-06 )—a series of articles which attracted the attention 
of William James and which are mentioned in the preface to 
“‘Pragmatism’’**® along with articles by Blondel and Le Roy, and 
books by Schiller and Dewey, for the benefit of the reader who 
may wish to delve more deeply into the pragmatic philosophy. 
According to de Sailly’s first article’*’ there are five “elements” 
in the Philosophy of Action: 


1. A critique of the immediate data of consciousness (données 
de la conscience); or, as Le Roy prefers to call it, @ critique of 
common sense. Here, the school of the Philosophy of Action 
makes common cause with Bergson, accepting with enthusiasm the 
conclusion of his Données immédiates de la conscience, that com- 
-mon sense has a tendency to materialize and spatialize reality, so 
that its data need to be radically corrected before they are fit for 
use in the building of any ultimate philosophy. Certain members 
of the school (notably Le Roy) have gone so far in carrying on 
this line of thought initiated by Bergson that they have come to 
be regarded as out-and-out Bergsonians; yet it is clear that they 


“4° Pragmatism, preface, viii. 147 Annales de phil. chrét., 151: 180-195. 


20 


292 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


are primarily disciples of Blondel, and only accidentally disciples 
of Bergson.*** 


2. A critique of science. Here, the school of the Philosophy 
of Action makes common cause with Poincaré, Milhaud, Duhem, 
Vincent—and, one might add, Boutroux—in their contention that 
scientific theories and concepts are only useful points of view, 
whose relative “truth” consists simply in their ability to help us 
solve certain practical problems, and fulfil certain practical pur- 
poses. Here again, Le Roy is the chief spokesman of the school. 
In his articles on Science et Philosophie in the Revue de Méta- 
physique et de Morale, vols. 7 and 8 (1899-1900), he states 
that science does not deal with the “inner life and infinite richness 
of concrete reality,” but with the external forms of things, viewed 
from various angles, or rather, with the rational symbols of these 
forms. Every scientific schema is undertaken for a certain practical 
purpose; it is true if it fulfils that purpose. Scientific truth is 
“the growing success of our conquest of the world.” “In a word,” 
concludes Le Roy, “‘scientific truth resembles moral good: one 
does not receive it from without, one acts it and makes it (om la 
pratique et on la fait).”*’’ To this doctrine de Sailly gives the 
name of “‘the new positivism.” 


3. A critique of the old epistemology. Here, the views of the 
school are best stated in an article of Blondel’s in the Revue de 
Métaphysique et de Morale for 1898, on The Idealistic Illusion. 
According to Blondel, the modern dilemma between idealism and 
realism, subjectivism and objectivism, is the result of a too intel- 
lectualistic definition of truth: the correspondence or adaequatio 
of the idea and the object. Blondel would replace the problem 
of the relation of the idea to the object with the problem of the 
relation of the idea to the totality of action (action totale). From 
this point of view, an idea is not an attempted “copy” of anything, 


“8 Cf. Leclére, Pragmatisme, Modern- 
isme, Protestantisme, 149: Malgré ses 
caractéres speciaux, cette philosophie [Le 
Roy’s] rejoint bien celle de M. Blondel, 
lui fait suite, et offre delle-méme a 
favoriser Vapologétique chére aux parti- 
sans du dogmatisme moral. On “moral 


dogmatism,” cf. point 4 in de Sailly’s 
analysis, infra. 

+ James mentions these articles also in 
the preface to “Pragmatism.” 

™ Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 
r hme 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 293 


but a “moment, a means, in the development of life, which it 
illuminates and furthers”; and the truth of an idea consists pre- 
cisely in its capacity to further life. TThis is the aspect of his 
philosophy to which Blondel was accustomed, as early as 1888, to 
give the name of pragmatisme, a name which he later gave up 
when he became acquainted with the more relativistic pragmatism 
of James.’ De Sailly is inclined to think that it would be better 
to retain the term pragmatisme for Blondel’s philosophy, and use 
Schiller’s term humanism for the philosophy of the Anglo- 
American pragmatists. 


4, “Moral Dogmatism.? ‘The expression is the Abbé Laber- 
thonniére’s. Out of this searching criticism of common sense, 
science, and the nature of knowledge, there emerges, according 
to him, not a new skepticism or a universal relativism, but a new 
dogmatism. The old dogmatism of the intellect, destroyed by 
Kant, is gone forever—though the Scholastic philosophers in their 
blindness fail to realize the fact—and we must henceforth agree 
that absolute reality is not discoverable along the path of reason; 
but 7 action we may attain the Absolute. In action, in the very 
process of discovering the best practical attitude to take in such a 
world as this, we at the same time win a practical certitude con- 
cerning the ultimate nature of the universe. In the last analysis, 
all depends upon an act of will, an act of faith. The man who 
takes the right practical attitude comes to have the right philosophy; 
the man who takes the wrong attitude goes astray in all his think- 
ing—and when Laberthonniére defines these determining attitudes 


more specifically, we are at once aware of the influence of 


Bautain 2°? 


On the one hand, the attitude of those who, lifting themselves up to 
the rank of an Absolute, consider that everything depends on them with- 


1 On Blondel’s use of the term prag- Maine de Biran as the two philosophers 
matisme, and his reasons for giving it who had most deeply influenced him. The 
up, see Stebbing’s Pragmatism and French Philosophy of Action is undoubtedly the 


Voluntarism, Cambridge, 1914, Index, product of other influences besides Bau- 
Blondel. tain’s; but I feel that his influence, 


*2T should, in all fairness, state the though indirect and unrecognized, was 
fact that Laberthonniére, up to the time fully as important as those which were 
I interviewed him, had hardly read Bau- more consciously recognized. 
tain at all. He named Boutroux and 


294 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


out their depending on anything; on the other hand, the attitude of 
those who, recognizing their dependence and their relativity, endeavor 
to open themselves and issue from themselves to seek higher up the 
center of their life and of their thought. One might say that the on 
attitude is faith in self; the other, faith in God.?** | 


5. An “integral apologetic” for the truth of the Catholic faith, 
based upon the foregoing philosophy. ‘This apologetic will be 
found best formulated in Laberthonniére’s Essais de philosophie 
religieuse. Its nature may be easily guessed from the account 
which has just been given of his “Moral Dogmatism.” 

De Sailly is quite conscious of the antecedents and affinities of 
the movement he is describing. He considers rightly, I believe, 
that the true progenitors of the Philosophy of Action in France 
are Ravaisson, Gratry, and Ollé-Laprune. We need only carry 
the family tree one step farther back than Gratry to visualize the 
relation of Bautain to the movement. Maine de Biran, Ravaisson, 
Boutroux, and Bergson; Bautain, Gratry, Ollé-Laprune: this sums 
up the double genealogy of the Philosophy of Action. As for the 
relation of the Philosophy of Action to Anglo-American Pragma- 
tism, de Sailly’s account of it is somewhat vitiated by his tendency 
to regard the Philosophy of Action as the one great movement of 
the day, in which even such a philosophy as Bergson’s appears only 
as a minor contributing “element.” From this perspective, Anglo- 
American Pragmatism appears to him to be a somewhat paradoxical 
and insufficiently worked-out form of the Philosophy of Action, 
marred by un expédient terre a terre et un assez pauvre empirisme. 
Its humanistic, utilitarian, and naturalistic tendencies are of course 
repugnant to him. It would be a still greater fault of perspective, 
however, were we to turn about and view the Philosophy of Action 
as a sort of half-way Pragmatism. Actually, we have in Prag- 
matism and the Philosophy of Action two closely related but rela- 
tively independent trends within a larger, world-wide movement 
for which we have no name in English, but which is often referred 
to in French by the term pragmatisme. ‘Their true relations will 
come out clearly, I believe, if we take two of their most eminent 
representatives, William James and Edouard Le Roy, and compare 
their positions. 


*SRéalisme Chrétien et Idéalisme Grec., 114-115. Cf. 86-87, 94-95, 147-149, 206-214. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 295 


James and Le Roy afford a good test case, for they are in many 
respects nearer together than any other pair of figures we might 
choose. James was more influenced by French voluntarism than 
was any other Anglo-American Pragmatist. He constantly con- 
fessed his debt to the voluntarism of Renouvier; like Le Roy, he 
was much influenced by Bergson; and he was at least acquainted 
with the writings of Blondel and Le Roy, as most of his Pragma- 
tist associates were not. Le Roy, on his part, was much more of 
a pragmatist than the other members of the school. Berthelot, 
in his Romantisme Utilitaire, the most thorough study of the 
antecedents and ingredients of the pragmatist movement with which 
I am acquainted,*’* says that Le Roy is entitled to be called a 
Pragmatist in the full sense of the word, while neither Blondel 
nor Bergson is to be rated more than a “semi-pragmatist.” It is 
significant that, as late as 1907, when the other members of the 
school had ceased to call themselves pragmatists, Le Roy still used 
the term pragmatisme to describe his own philosophy.**? Both 
James and Le Roy, moreover, were motivated in their philosophy 
by the desire to rehabilitate religious faith, and find some legitimate 
way of escape from scientific positivism and agnosticism. Both 
proposed practical helpfulness as the criterion of truth in the realm 
of religion, and both went on to contend that this pragmatic test 
of truth was, after all, the only criterion of truth in every realm. 

The difference between them—and between the two schools— 
begins to appear when we note that James, in his effort to put 
religious truth on a par with scientific truth, was led to deny that 
there was any such thing as truth in the ordinary sense of the 
word. The utility of an idea, for him, constituted its truth. Le 
Roy, on the other hand—and here he represents the whole school, 
from Bautain down to the present day—always considered that the 
practical consequences of an idea afforded a test of its genuine and, 
if the word be permitted, its objective truth. Religious truth, to 
Le Roy, is not merely on a par with scientific truth in the general 
hurly-burly of relativity; it is a superior order of truth. Common 
sense, science, and philosophy represent ascending degrees of valid- 


4See I, 27, 119. On the broader 5 See his Dogme et Critique, Paris, 
meaning of pragmatisme in French, cf. 1907, Index, pragmatisme. 
supra, chapter III, note 175. 


296 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


ity. ‘The truth of each is relative to the practical object which 
it has in view; yet the validity of science is superior to that of 
common sense, and that of philosophy to that of science, because 
the end in view is more inclusive. And even philosophy (whose 
last word, for Le Roy, is not Bergsonian intuition, but action) is 
inferior to religion as an ultimate point of view; for all dialectics, 
even voluntaristic dialectics, approach the Absolute only as a limit. 
““A St. Vincent of Paul comes nearer than a Spinoza to the depths 
of veritable reality.”*°° Le Roy is quite right when he says, in 
his Dogme et Critique, 


\ 


You will please note the difference between the doctrine I defend 

and contemporary English ‘“‘pragmatism.” The latter, it seems, puts 

. in place of the desire for truth a preoccupation with mere wtility. 

I propose nothing of the sort. All I say is that the true must be acted 

and lived as well as thought out; that discernment can operate, here, 

only by . . . putting things into practice—in brief, by making an effort 
toward effective realization.1°’ 


The Philosophy of Action lost its popularity as quickly as it 
gained it. All the leading figures in the school, especially Laber- 
thonniére and Le Roy, were implicated in the Modernist move- 
ment; and the authors of the Encyclical Pascendi*** found the 
root of all the errors of the Modernists in this “agnostic” philoso- 
phy. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the school of the Phi- 
losophy of Action was scattered to the four winds, as the school 
of Strasbourg had been; and the influence of Bautain was once 
more on the wane. As the father of Fideism, he was already in 
ill repute; as a Modernist before the Modernists, he was emphati- 
cally to be shunned. 

I think we must agree that Bautain was one of the grandparents 
of French Catholic Modernism; yet before we praise or blame him 
too extravagantly for that, we should be clear in our minds as to 
precisely what his relation to Modernism is. Modernism was a 
very complex movement, consisting of at least three distinct and 


6 See the end of the last article on WN. Y., 1908, translated by Tyrrell. Cf. 
Science et Philosophie, Rev. de Mét. et the Encyclical’s account of this philoso- 
de Mor., VIII, 71. phy, 154-180, with the Modernists’ reply, 

Op. cit.» 331-332. 93-110. 


*8 See The Programme of Modernism, 


IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 297 


independent tendencies: radical Biblical and historical criticism, 
represented by Loisy and Duchesne; a radical social movement, led 
by Mare Sangnier, who sought to ally the Church with modern 
humanitarianism and democracy; and finally, philosophical Mod- 
ernism, or the Philosophy of Action, represented by such men as 
Blondel, Le Roy, and the Abbé Laberthonniére.!*® Bautain was 
neither an historical critic nor a social liberal. He knew little 
about the critical methods which German scholars were even in his 
day applying to the study of the Bible and the history of the 
Church; and what little he heard about them shocked him greatly. 
He took comparatively little interest in the efforts of Lamennais 
and Lacordaire to reconcile Catholicism with democracy and 
political liberalism; they, not he, are the real ancestors of “social 
160 He would even have recoiled from the views 
Never- 


Modernism. 
expressed by Le Roy on the nature of religious dogmas. 
theless, the voluntaristic principles which Le Roy pushes to such 
lengths in his Dogme et Critique’™ are essentially Bautain’s prin- 
ciples; and Le Roy got them, in part, through devious channels 
whose windings can be clearly traced, from Bautain. Bautain 
was to the French philosophical Modernists what Newman was to 
Tyrrell. If Cardinal Newman is venerated—and read—by good 
Catholics, in spite of the alarming conclusions which have been 
deduced from some of his teachings, why should Bautain, the 
French Newman, be so completely ignored by the Church which 
he loved and served so well? 

I have spoken as if the collapse of the Modernist movement put 
a definite end to Bautain’s influence. ‘That is not strictly true. 
Philosophical Modernism, before its collapse, had made its contri- 
bution to the general current of contemporary thought; and several 
of the former leaders of the school—Blondel and Le Roy, for 


instance—are still philosophizing as individuals, in a somewhat 


1 See Houtin, Histoire du modernisme 
catholique, Paris, 1913. 

1 Tt is true that Bautain wrote a pop- 
ular book on Religion et Liberté, and ran 
for election in 48 on a liberal platform; 
but his political liberalism was not nearly 
so thorough-going as that of many other 
Catholic priests. 


1611¢ Roy says, for example (op. cit. 
25-26) that “‘God is personal’ means 
‘act in your relations with God as in your 
relations with a human person.’ Simi- 
larly, ‘Jesus is risen? means ‘be in the 
same relation to him as you would have 
been before his death, or as if in the 
presence of a contemporary.’ ” 


298 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


more cautious manner, preferably on non-religious themes. ‘The 
works of Ollé-Laprune, the soberest and least speculative of all 
Bautain’s spiritual successors, and the only one who never incurred 
the charge of heresy, still have an enormous vogue. And—who 
knows?—the present Aristotelian revival in Catholic circles may 
not last forever. Christian thought, as Professor Gilson*® is fond 
of pointing out, has swung back and forth continually between 
Platonism and Aristotelianism; and even since the Encyclical 
A eterni Patris there is room for another pendulum-swing, since the 
philosophy of St. Thomas contains Platonic elements. When 
Platonism comes back into its own, the philosophy of Bautain and 
his successors may again receive the attention it deserves from his 
co-religionists. Meanwhile, the rest of us, less concerned with 
questions of orthodoxy and heresy, are free to salute with respect 
the noble and pathetic figure of the “philosopher of Strasbourg,” 
who did so much to make Catholicism intelligible to the modern 
mind. 


2M. le professeur Etienne Gilson, 
professor of Mediaeval Philosophy at the 
Sorbonne. It was Professor Gilson who 
first directed my attention to Bautain. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I. On THE GENERAL MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT TO WHICH 
BAUTAIN BELONGS 


1. On THE GENERAL History or CatTHouic THouGHT SINCE 1800! 


WERNER, K., Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur, 
Schaffhausen, 1861-67. Vol. V. 

Scumip, A., Wissenschaftliche Richtungen auf dem Gebiet des Katho- 
lizismus. Munich, 1862. 

Brin, P. M., Histoire de la philosophie contemporaine. Paris, 1886.. 
2me Partie, “‘Restauration de la philosophie chrétienne.” 
Neo-scholastic point of view. 

Betuamy, J., La Théologie Catholique du 19me siécle. 2nd ed. Paris,, 
1904. 

For the conventional view of Bautain, see pp. 29 ef seg. 

Hesert, M., L’Evolution de la foi catholique. Paris, 1905. 

La Prana, G., “Recent Tendencies in Roman Catholic Theology.” Har-- 
vard Theological Review, July, 1922, pp. 233-292. 


2. On FRENCH AND BELGIAN CATHOLIC THOUGHT IN THE 19TH 
CENTURY 


Damiron, P., Essai sur Vhistoire de la philosophie en France au xixme 
siécle. 5th ed. Brussels, 1835. 
French Catholic thought in the early 19th century treated in its relations with: 


contemporary philosophy. The 5th edition contains an important supplement,. 
in which a critique of Bautain’s philosophy occurs. 


FerrAz, M., Histoire de la philosophie en France au xixme siécle: Tra-- 
ditionalisme et Ultramontanisme. Paris, 1880. 


The best single book for getting the background of our subject. Good chapter 
on Bautain. 


Branves, G., Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. London,, 
1906. Vol. III, “The Reaction in France.” 

WEILL, G., Histoire du catholicisme libéral en France, 1828-1908.. 
Paris, 1909. 

WuLrF, M. pe, Histoire de la philosophie en Belgique. Brussels, 1910. 
Part III, esp. pp. 266-314. 

GueErarp, A. L., French Prophets of Yesterday: a study of religious 
thought under the Second Empire. N. Y., 1913. 

Masson, P. M., Rousseau et la Restauration Religieuse. 2nd ed. Paris, 
1916. 


Relation of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and the Romanticist movement to the 
Catholic revival of the early 19th century. 


302 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Mowrret, F., Le Mouvement Catholique en France de 1830 a 1850. 


Paris, 1917. 

‘Couutns, R. W., Catholicism and the Second French Republic. N. Y., 
1923; . 
For the social program of the Liberal Catholics of 48, see the Introduction, 
and chapters I-III. 


3. On German Catuo.tic THOUGHT IN THE 19TH CENTURY 


‘Werner, K., Geschichte der Katholischen Theologie. Munich, 1866. 
Book III, esp. pp. 400-510. 

LicHTENBERGER, H., Histoire des idées religieuses en Allemaens 2nd 
ed., 3 vols., bane 1888. 
Vol. I, Chap. VII; Vol. III, Chap. VII. 

Goyrau, G., L’Allemagne Religieuse: Le Catholicisme. 3rd ed., 2 vols., 
Paris,. 1905, 
Book II, “La pensée catholique et la pensée allemande.” 

VermMeIL, E., J.-A. Mohler et l’école catholique de Tubingue. Paris, 
1913. 


Contains important introduction on the general movement of Catholic thought 
in Germany in the early 19th century. 


II]. On BautTAaAIin’s LIFE AND TEACHINGS 


Lamazou, ABBE, L’Abbé Bautain. Paris, Bureau de la Semaine Religieuse, 
1867. 
Cf. Semaine religieuse de Paris, Oct. 26, 1867. 

ForsseT, THEODULE, “L’ Abbé Bautain.” Correspondent, June 10, 1868. 
These articles by Lamazou and Foisset are simply brief obituary sketches. 

‘Campaux, A., L’Abbé Bautain. Paris, 1868, Strasbourg, 1869. 
Extended eulogy. Abbrev., Campaux I. 

Die el tis Le Philosophe de Strasbourg: étude sur l’Abbé Bautain et son 
école. Nancy, 1876. 
Same as above, with supplement. Abbrev., Campaux II. 

RéEcny, ABBE DE, L’Abbé Bautain: sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1884. 
The one indispensable book on Bautain. 

IncoLp, PERE, L’Abbé Bautain: étude sur sa vie et ses oeuvres, avec des 
documents inédits. Paris, 1884. 
Review of de Régny, containing some documents from other sources. 

Mer es L’Abbé Bautain et ses disciples. Colmar and Paris, 1897. 
Unpublished letters. Reprinted from Miscellanea Alsatica. 

oh DN case Lettres inédites du P. de Rozaven, S.J., sur les erreurs de 
M. Bautain. Paris, 1902. 

Borriges, E. von, “Louis Bautain.” Zeitschrift fiir die Geschichte des 
Oberrheins, Neue Folge, XXVII (1902), pp. 99-140. 

Priecer, L., “Ueber Bautain’s Stellung zur Scholastik.” Strasshurger 
Dioxzesanblatt, 1906, pp. 79-88, 119-134. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 303: 


Fricue, Me., Une Francaise d’Alsace: Mlle. Louise Humann. 2nd ed. 
Paris, 1921. 

A life inseparable from Bautain’s. 

Baupin, E., Louis Bautain, le ‘philosophe de Strasbourg.’ Discours pro- 
noncé le 22 novembre 1920 4a la rentrée solennelle de Université. 
de Strasbourg. Strasbourg, 1921. 

Abbrev., Baudin I. 

A RAN ae “La philosophie de Louis Bautain.” Revue des sciences re- 
ligieuses, 1 (1921). 

Abbrev., Baudin II. The Rev. des. sci. rel. is published by the Faculty of 
Catholic Theology at the University of Strasbourg. 

Plast: ‘Correspondance entre Bautain, Moursvieff, et Metschersky.” 
Rev. des sci. rel., III (1923). 

Other references to Bautain will be found in the biographies of his pupils 
(infra, V), and in the following books: 

Forsset, IM., Vie du R. PP? Eacordaire; 2nd ed, 2 vols., Paris, 1873. 
An ideal introduction to the whole Liberal Catholic movement. Consult index: 
for references to Bautain. 

GUERBER, J., Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann. Freiburg-i.-Br., 1880. 
Pp. 365 ef seg. 

BaupriLuarT, A., Les Normaliens dans l’Eglise. Paris, 1895. 


Pp. 17-33. 
(Anon.) Mgr. André Raess, Paris, 1905. 
Pas / fer seg. i 


III. Baurarn’s Works 


1. PusBiisHED Works 

For complete list, see de Régny, op. cit.. Appendix D. I cite here only those works: 
which are important as sources for the study of Bautain’s philosophy. Most 
of them will be found at the Bibliothégue Nationale in Paris; but the best 
collection of Bautainiana, including also the works of Bautain’s pupils and’ 
much pamphlet material, will be found at Strasbourg, in the Bibliothégque Uni- 
versitaire et dé la Ville. The library of the College of Juilly contains several 
works otherwise inaccessible, as does also that of the Ecole Normale, at Paris. 
Several of the more important works may be found at the New York Public 
Library; others at Columbia. 

DissERTATIO PHILOSOPHICA, de idealismo et phaenomenismo, in eo quod 
pertinet ad existentiam substantiae spiritualis; quam .. . proponit. 
Peis ie Vie Bautain:, Paris, de’ Patris, ‘1816. 

Peers: 
VARIETES PHILOSOPHIQUES. Strasbourg, Silbermann, 1823. 
Pp. 44. Abbrev., Variézés. 

Propositions générales sur la vie. Strasbourg, Silbermann, 1826. 
Pp. 63. Abbrev., Props. 

La moraLeE de l’Evangile comparée 4 la morale des philosophes. Stras-- 
bourg, Février, 1827. 

Pp. 76. Abbrev., Mor. Ev. P. 


304 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


DE LENSEIGNEMENT de la philosophie en France au xixe siécle. Stras- 
bourg, Février; Paris, Derivaux, 1833. 

Pp. 91. Abbrev., Ens. Phil. F. Reprinted, with a few excisions and revisions, 
in the Psych. Exp., I, pp. i-xcix. 

‘QUELQUES REFLExIoNs sur la doctrine du sens commun. Paris, Bureau 
de la Revue Européenne, 1833. 

Abbrev., Sens commun, or Letter on Common Sense. Reprinted from the 
Revue Européenne, VI, pp. 637 et seg. (1833). 

‘QUELQUES REFLEXIoNs sur l’institution des conférences religieuses 4 Paris. 
Paris, Thuan, 1834. 

Abbrev., Réflexions. Reprinted from the Univers Religieux, Folio L2, Columns 
1117, 1202, 1262, 1443, (1833-34). 

[ DE L’ENsEIGNEMENT philosophique de M. |’Abbé Bautain. Paris, 1834. ] 
Abbrev., Ens. Phil. B. The anonymous Mennaisian’s critique. So full of 
quotations from Bautain’s unpublished lectures that it deserves to be counted 
as a primary source. 


PHILOSOPHIE DU CHRISTIANISME. Correspondance religieuse de L. Bau- 
tain, publiée par l’Abbé H. de Bonnechose. Paris, Derivaux; Stras- 
bourg, Février, 1835. 

2 vols., pp. cxviiit375 and 502. Abbrev., Phil. Chr. 

LEeTTRE 4 Mgr. Lepappe de Trévern, évéque de Strasbourg. Strasbourg, 
Derivaux; Paris, Lagny, 1837. 

Pp. 24. Abbrev., Lettre a Pévéque. 

‘PuiLosoPpuiz. Psychologie Expérimentale. Strasbourg, Derivaux; Paris, 
Lagny, 1839. 

2 vols., pp. xcixt388 and 500. New edition, with title L’Esprit humain et 
ses facultés, Paris, Didier, 1859. Abbrev., Psych. Exp. This and the Pil. 


Chr. are our two most important sources. 

PHILOSOPHIE morale. Paris, Ladrange et Dezobry, 1842. 
2 vols., pp. ixt555 and 651. Abbrev., Phil. Mor. 

REsuME des conférences faites au cercle catholique, 1842-43. Paris, au 
cercle catholique, 1843. 

Pp. 30. Abbrev., Cerc. Cath. Reprinted from the Correspondant, July 15, 
1843. 

La Reticton et la liberté considérées dans leurs rapports.. Conférences 
de Notre-Dame de 1848. Paris, Sagnier et Bray, 1848. 
Pp. 238. New edition Paris, Hachette, 1865. Abbrev., Rel. et Lib. 

Avis AUX CHRETIENS sur les tables tournantes et parlantes, par un ecclési- 
astique. Paris, Devarenne et Perisse, 1853. 
Pp. 24. 

FETE DEs ECOLES, Panégyrique de saint Paul, prononcé en l’église patro- 
nale de Sainte-Geneviéve, le dimanche 2 décembre, 1855. Paris, 
Adrien Le Clere, 1855. 

Pp. 72. Contains Bautain’s recantation of his fideistic heresy. 

‘La Morate de |’Evangile comparée aux divers systeémes de morale. Lecons 
faites 2 la Faculté de théologie, en Sorbonne, pour servir d’intro- 
duction au cours de théologie morale. Paris, Vaton, 1855. 

Pp. viiit453. Abbrev., Mor. Ev. D. An elaboration of Mor. Ev. P. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 305 


PHILOSOPHIE des lois au point de vue chrétien. Paris, Didier, 1860. 
Pp. viiit431. 

La CHRETIENNE de nos jours. Lettres spirituelles. Paris, Hachette, 
1859-61. 


3 vols., pp. xiiit396, 392, and vit128. Bautain’s own account of his con- 
version will be found in Vol. II, Letter XV. 


La CONSCIENCE ou la régle des actions humaines. Paris, Didier, 1861. 
Pp. 448. 

ManveEt de philosophie morale. Paris, Hachette, 1866. 
Pp. ivt+440. 

Les cuosss de |’autre monde, journal d’un philosophe recueilli et publié 


par labbé Bautain. Ocuvre posthume. Paris, Hachette, 1868. 
Pp. viiit449. Abbrev., Choses. 


De Véducation publique en France au xixe siécle. Paris, Bray et Retaux, 


1876. 


Pp. viiit326. Contains passages bearing on Bautain’s educational philosophy. 


2. UNPUBLISHED Works 


These, together with various other documents bearing upon Bautain’s life and teach- 

ings, constitute the Fonds Bautain, which Professor Baudin and I have analyzed 
_ and classified as follows. References to the Fonds Bautain (FB) may be iden- 

tified by looking up the proper letter, or letter and number, in this table. Thus, 
FB,V7 would refer to the Ms. Logigque dated 1832-33. Documents lettered A 
to E, inclusive, are to be found in the Archives of the Bishopric of Strasbourg; 
H to Q, in the library of the College of Juilly; U and V, in the possession 
of the Congrégation des Dames de St.-Louis, at Juilly. 

A. Various papers concerning the polemics. 

B. Courses and extracts from courses. 
(1) Extracts from courses (period before Bautain’s conversion). 
(2) Course in Ethics (1829-30). 
(3) «Psychology (1833-34). 
(4) yh “* Anthropology (1834-35). 
(5) 5 “Logic (no date). 

C. Notes AND ExTRAcTs from articles on Bautain and his pupils. 

D. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. 

E. Communications from the clergy in support of the Bishop’s Aver- 
tissement. 


t . . ° . . . . . ° . . . ° . . 


H. Simple exposé de la question entre Mgr. PEvéque de Strasbourg et 
plusieurs prétres de son diocése. (Manuscript in Bautain’s own hand- 
writing.) 

I. SrrasBourc aFFairs (letters and documents). 

J. CorreEsponvENcE (1830-1840). 

K. Copy of Bautain’s correspondence (two cahiers, 1833-1840). 

L. Documents concerning the appeal to Rome (1838-1840). 

M. Bauratn’s JOURNAL at Rome (two cahiers, 1838). 


306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


FATHER PERRONE’s observations on Bautain’s writings. 
BoNNECHOSES’s CORRESPONDENCE concerning the matter of the Con- 
grégation de St.-Louis. 

LETTERS FROM BauTain to de Régny (Juilly period). 

VARIOUS LETTERS about Bautain, addressed to de Régny. 


O-4 


LETTER to the Rector of the Academy (July 1, 1822). 

Manuscript philosophical works of Bautain. 

(1) Cours de métaphysique (1821-22). 

(2) Principes de philosophie. Métaphysique. (1821-22). 

(3) Métaphysique. Ontologie. 

(4) Elementa metaphysicis (sic). 

(5) Anthropologie (1826-27). 

(6) Logigue (1824-25). 

(Fu a ae 185323 38 

(8)  “ (1840-41). 

(9) De la Vérité. De la Certitude. (Companion essays, dated 
1846.) 

(10) Philosophie, théologique et mathématique (1823-24). 


<q on 


IV. CoNTEMPORARY COMMENT ON BAUTAIN AND His 
PHILOSOPHY 


1. In PERIODICALS 


Revue Européenne, Vol. 1V, pp. 58 ef seg.; V,.635 et seg.; VI, 33, 149, 
52403730 X WeA81¢ 
Friendly to Bautain. 

Ami de la Religion, Vol. LXXV, pp. 513 e¢ seg.; LXXXI, pp. 3, 33 

(articles by the Abbé Raess); LXXX, 129; LXXXIII, pp. 305, 385, 
417 (articles signed “L.D.A.”’); also LXXXII, 241, 385; LXXXIV, 
141, 173, 461, 784; LXXXV, 209; LXXXVIII, 145, 449; XCVI, 
3559/0, ee. 
Hostile to Bautain. Besides the articles cited, scattered references to Bautain 
and his pernicious ideas will be found in almost every number, from Vol. 
LXXV to Vol. XCVIII. 

Revue d Alsace, 2e série, 1, 339 et seg. (1837). 

Criticism of Bautain’s philosophy by Ch. Boersch. 

Revue des Deux Mondes, 1844. Article on “La philosophie du clergé,” 
by Emile Saisset. 
Contains critique of Bautain. 

References to Bautain’s controversy with the Bishop may also be found in the follow- 
ing periodicals: Univers Religieux, Correspondant, Annales de Philosophie 
Chrétienne, Les Etudes Religieuses, La Dominicale, Union Ecclésiastique, Mémo- 
rial du Clergé (Ghent), Journal des Villes et Campagnes, Gazette de France, 
Courrier de la Meuse, Journal du Haut- et Bas-Rhin, Le Semeur, Le Temps. 
Consult their files for 1834-35. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 


2. In Booxs anp PAMPHLETS 


Un mor sur la soutenance de M. Bautain. (Anon.) Strasbourg, 1826. 

AVERTISSEMENT sur la philosophie de M. Bautain, prétre de notre diocése 
et professeur 4 l?Académie de Strasbourg. Strasbourg, Le Roux, 1834. 

ExposiT1on abrégée des questions les plus importants de la religion, adressée 
aux éléves de son grand-séminaire par ]’Evéque de Strasbourg. Paris, 
1834. 
Designed to warn the students against the errors of Bautain. 

Letrre a M. l’Evéque de Strasbourg, 4 l’occasion de son Avertissement 
sur l’enseignement de M. |’Abbé Bautain, par Paul Rochette. Stras- 
bourg, 1834. 


Pp. 74. Rochette was a Saint-Simonian admirer of Bautain, editor of the 
Journal du Haut- et Bas-Rhin. For summary and critique of this letter, cf, 
Ami de la Religion, LXXXII, 241, 385. 

REFLExions sur la lettre de M. Paul Rochette. (Anon.) Strasbourg, 
1834. 

Deux mots 4a l’ex-éléve en théologie, éléve en droit. Strasbourg, 1834. 
Rochette’s rebuttal, in reply to the above. 

Un mor en réponse aux deux mots. Strasbourg, 1834. 

Counter-rebuttal by the anonymous critic (F. J. Clavé?). 

Coup p’oEIL sur |’enseignement de M. l’Abbé Bautain, par PAbbé D.... 
Strasbourg, 1835. 

Reprinted, with additions, from the articles signed “L.D.A.” in the Ami de la 
Religion. 

QUELQUES REFLEXIoNs sur l’enseignement de M. Bautain, en réponse au 
coup d’oeil de Abbé D....par un laique (Fayet?). Strasbourg, 
1835. 

EcLaIRCISsEMENTS sur |’enseignement de M. Bautain, en réponse au coup 
d’oeil de Abbé D.... sur cet enseignement. Par l?Abbé Théodore 
Ratisbonne. Strasbourg, 1835. 

Diz Leuren des Hermesianismus tiber das Verhaltnis der Vernunft zur 
Offenbarung gutgeheissen, und die entgegenstehenden Ansichten als 
falsch und gefahrlich verworfen von dem Bischof von Strassburg, 
Herrn Lepappe de Trévern, nebst einem Breve Sr. Papst. Heilig- 
keit, Gregors XVI. Von J. W. J. Braun. Bonn, 1835. 

Rapport a4 Mgr. |’Evéque de Strasbourg sur les écrits de M. l’Abbé Bau- 
tain. Publié par ordre de sa Grandeur. Strasbourg, 1838. 

BrieF an Bautain. Von J. A. Mohler. Printed in Mohler’s Schriften 
und Aufsdtze, ed. Déllinger, Regensburg, 1839, II, 141-164. 

La CHRETIENNE de nos jours suivant M. lAbbé Bautain, par un chrétien 
protestant. Paris, Grassart, 1863. 


Pa33 5: 
To this list should be added the anonymous Mennaisian’s critique (Ens. Phil. B), 
which is so important a source that I have included it in the list of Bautain’s 


works (supra, III). 


21 


308 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


V. THINKERS IMMEDIATELY INFLUENCED BY BAUTAIN 


1. ADOLPHE CARL 


BANNACHE, PERE, Notice Biographique sur le R. P. Carl. Paris, 1874. 

Caru, A., L’enseignement de la rhétorique, doit-il précéder dans ]’instruc- 
tion de la jeunesse, celui de la logiquef ChAlons, 1824. 

oh eR a Pay De origine et natura verbi humani. Strasbourg, 1827. 

Re AUy ea Essai sur le langage articulé. Strasbourg, 1827. 


elias Du matérialisme en médecine. Strasbourg, 1828. 
The last three essays are theses for the degrees of docteur-és-lettres and doctor 
of medicine. 


2. ‘THEODORE RaTIsBOoNNE 
(Anon.) Le T. R. Pére Marie-Théodore Ratisbonne, fondateur de la 


société des prétres et de la congrégation des religieuses de Notre- 
Dame de Sion. Paris, 1903. 
See Vol. I, Chaps. III-X, XX; Vol. II, Chap. XIV, for references to Bautain. 

RaTIsBoNnE, T., Des obligations qui naissent du mariage. Strasbourg, 
1826. 

Ee a Essai sur l’éducation morale. Strasbourg, 1828. 

NaN is Eclaircissements sur l’enseignement de M. Bautain, en réponse 
au coup d’oeil de Abbé D....sur cet enseignement. Strasbourg, 
1835. 


3. IstpoRE GosCHLER 
GoscuLER, I., Acte public sur la puissance paternelle. Strasbourg, 1826. 
aaa ha Du Panthéisme. Strasbourg, 1839. New ed., Paris, 1862. 
whinge”, De psalmorum poési et philosophia. Strasbourg, 1840. 


Theses for the degrees of licence en droit and docteur-és-lettres. 

Among the works of Ratisbonne and Goschler should also be mentioned their speeches 
at the Hdétel-de-Ville, before the Société d’encouragement pour le travail parmi 
les Israélites de Strasbourg, printed by Silbermann, 1826-27, and preserved in 
a collection of pamphlets at Juilly. 


4. Henri DE BoNNECHOSE 
Besson, L., Vie du Cardinal de Bonnechose. 2 vols., Paris, 1887. 

See Vol. I, Chaps. V-VII and p. 507, for references to Bautain. 
BonnEcHosE, H. pe, Letter to the Revue Européenne, May, 1834. 
Hugg ee Introduction to the Philosophie du Christianisme. 

Besides this important introduction by Bonnechose, autobiographical notices and letters 


were contributed by four of the other disciples: Ratisbonne (Adéodat), Goschler 
(Eudore), Lewel (Julien), and Adolphe Carl. 


5. Mor. Maret (1805-1884) 


FERRAZ, Of. cit., 357-373. 
Bazin, G., Vie de Mgr. Maret. 2 vols., Paris, 1891. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 


Maret, H. L. C., Essai sur le panthéisme. Paris, 1840. 3rd. ed., re- 
vised, 1845. 

a St aber Théodicée chrétienne, ou comparaison de la notion chrétienne 
avec la notion rationaliste de Dieu. Paris, 1844. 

ye ae Philosophie et Religion. Dignité de la raison humaine et 
nécessité de la révélation divine. Paris, 1856. 

eee ae nee Lettre . . . 4 nos seigneurs les évéques de France. Paris, 


1858. 


Reply to Dom Guéranger’s attack on the above. 


6. ALPHONSE Gratry (1805-1872) 


FERRAZ, Op. cit., 373-431. 

Perraup, A. L., The Last Days of Father Gratry. Translated by special 
permission, by Henrietta Lear. London, 1872. 

O.LLE-Laprune, Eloge du P. Gratry. Paris, 1896. 

Wacner, “Le Pére Gratry en Alsace,” Revue catholique dAlsace, 1900, 
pp. 836 e¢ seg. 

PERravuD, A. L., Le Pére Gratry: sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1900. 

Cuavuvin, Le Pére Gratry. Paris, 1901. 

Braun, L. L., Gratry’s Theorie der religidsen Erkenntnis. Strassburg, 
1914. 

PoinTUD-GUILLEMOT, Essai sur la philosophie de Gratry. Paris, 1917. 

eet eee La doctrine sociale de Gratry. Paris, 1917. 

Gratry, A., Des préceptes de la rhétorique. Strasbourg, 1829. 

Lh pga Dissertatio philosophica de methodis scientiarum. Strasbourg, 
1833. 
Twin theses for the degree of docteur-és-lettres, written under Bautain’s di- 


rection. 
ae WAN AOE Philosophie. De la connaissance de Dieu. 2nd ed., 2 vols., 


‘Paris, 1854. 


This work was “crowned” by the Académie Francaise. Eng. ed., translated by 
Alger, with title “Guide to the Knowledge of God,” Boston, 1892. 


ae. et Logique. Paris, 1854. 

Tn ee De la connaissance de l’A4me. 2 vols., Paris, 1857. 

PACA Fe La philosophie du Credo. Paris, 1861. 

he as Les sources de la régénération sociale. Paris, 1862. 

Yee ee a: La morale et la loi de Vhistoire. 2 vols., Paris, 1868; 4th 
ed., Paris, 1909. 

Se seh a! Souvenirs de ma jeunesse. 16th ed., Paris, 1920. 


See pp. 133-158 for references to Bautain. 

For a fuller list of Gratry’s works, consult the biographies of Perraud and Chauvin, 
supra. This list is designed to exhibit Bautain’s influence upon Gratry. For a 
good essay on Gratry in English, see Guérard, op. cit. (supra, section I, 1, of 
this bibliography). On Bonnetty and other thinkers less directly influenced by 
Bautain, see Ferraz, op. cit., 345-355. 


310 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


VI. THInKERS INFLUENCED BY BAUTAIN "THROUGH GRATRY 


1. Ernesr Hexzio (1828-1885) 

GUERARD, 0p. cit., 63-68. 

HeE.1o, E., M. Renan, L’Allemagne, et l’athéisme du xixe siécle. Paris, 
1859. 

RA Roe L’Homme. Paris, 1872. 2nd ed.,. Paris, 1894. 

a oka, re Les plateaux de la balance. Paris, 1880. 

pov tess Philosophie et athéisme. Paris, 1888. 2nd ed., Paris, 1903. 

dea KE Le siécle, les hommes et les idées. Paris, 1895. 4th ed., 
Paris, 1905. 


2. Lton Oxvieé-Laprune (1839-1898) 


FonsEGRIVE, G., Léon Ollé-Laprune. Paris, 1898. 

BLonDEL, M., “Portraits contemporains: Léon Ollé-Laprune.” Revue 
politique et littéraire, 4th series, XII (1898), pp. 216-221. 

PRONE OL Léon Ollé-Laprune. Paris, 1900. 

BazaiLuas, La crise de la croyance. Paris, 1901. 
Consult the table of contents for references to Ollé-Laprune. 

FonseGRIvVE, G., Léon Ollé-Laprune: Phomme et le penseur. Paris, 1912. 

OLLE-LaprungE, De la certitude morale. Paris, 1881. 9th ed., Paris, 
1924. 

ae ap es ane La philosophie et le temps présent. Paris, 1890. 2nd ed., 
Paris, 1894. 

Ube tenets Les sources de la paix intellectuelle. Paris, 1892. 

ERA a Le prix de la vie. Paris, 1894. 44th ed., Paris, 1923. 

ibe ara La vitalité chrétienne. Paris, 1901. 
Articles collected by G. Goyau, who also contributes an excellent introduction 
on Ollé-Laprune. 

La raison et le rationalisme. Edited by V. Delbos. Paris, 


VII. CoNTEMPORARY THINKERS INFLUENCED BY OLLE-La- 
PRUNE: THE SCHOOL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION 


1.. Maurice BLonpEL 

Bulletin de la société francaise de philosophie, 1902, p. 190; 1908, pp. 
27 ovteees 

Paropi, D., La philosophie contemporaine en France. 2nd ed., Paris, 
1920. 
Pp. 302-306, 308, 315. 

Gunn, J. A., Modern French Philosophy. London, 1922. 
Pp. 86-88, 259-269, 311-312. 

GILBERT, K., Maurice Blondel’s Philosophy of Action. Univ. of North 
Carolina, 1924. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 311 


BuonpvEL, M., L’Action. Paris, 1893. 
The most important work produced by the school. Out of print, and very hard 
to obtain. The only copy I have found in this country is at the Widener 
Library, Harvard. 


Ae sais (a Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matiére 
dapologétique. Saint-Dizier, 1896. | 
Reprinted from the Annales de philosophie chrétienne, Jan.-June, 1896. 

Ge ee “L’Ilusion idéaliste.” Rev. de métaphysique et de morale, 


araet yrs Le procés de lintelligence. Paris, 1922. 


2. THe Asst LABERTHONNIERE 
Littey, A. L., Modernism: a record and review. London, 1908. 
Chap. VIII. 
LaBERTHONNIERE, L., Essais de philosophie religieuse. Paris, 1903. 
CHE ees Réalisme chrétien et idéalisme grec. Paris, 1904. 
tag ac La Positivisme et Catholicisme. Paris, 1911. 


3. Epouarp Le Roy 
LILLEY, of. cit. 
Chap. XIII. 
Paropl, of. cit. 
Pp. 242-245, 307-311. 
Le Roy, E., “Science et philosophie.” Rev. de métaphysique et de 
morale, VII-VIII (1899-1900). 
eet tats “Qu’est-ce qu’un dogme?” Quinzaine, Apr., 1905. 
Eng. translation by Robinson, with title “What is a Dogma?” Chicago, Open 
Court, 1918. 


et va Dogme et Critique. Paris, 1907. 
The above reprinted, with the objections of certain critics, and lengthy rebuttal. 
She eee eae Une philosophie nouvelle, Henri Bergson. 2nd ed., Paris, 
1913. | 
Eng. translation by Benson, N. Y., 1914. 


4. GrorGE FonsEcrive (-Lespinasse; published novels under pseudonym 
of Yves le Querdec) 

BarBiER, ApsBE, Les démocrates chrétiens et le modernisme. Paris, 1907. 
Pp. 215-265. 

FonsEGRIVE, G., Essai sur le libre arbitre, sa théorie et son histoire. Paris, 
Lee fer end ed... Paris, -1896. 

pee ONS La causalité efficiente. Paris, 1893. 

etd, wets, Catholicisme et démocratie. Paris, 1898. 

payee a Le Catholicisme et la vie de l’esprit. Paris, 1898. 2nd ed., 
Paris, 1899. | 

ie Lee La crise du libéralisme. Paris, 1899. 

‘es fat L’Attitude du catholique devant la science. Paris, 1900. 


312 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


MINAS ioe: 8: La crise sociale. Paris, 1901. 
Uo ane ae Catholicisme et libre pensée. Paris, 1905. 
AOS eek Essais sur la connaissance. Paris, 1909. 
Note especially the essay on Le Kantisme et la pensée contemporaine. 
Eléments de philosophie. Paris, no date. 


5. FERDINAND BRUNETIERE (1846-1906) 


SaRGENT, Les Grands Convertis. Paris, 1906. 
FonsEGRIVE, Ferdinand Brunetiére. Paris, 1908. 
Parop1, D., Traditionalisme et Démocratie. Paris, 1909. 
Part I, Chap. I, “Traditionalisme et Moralité: M. F. Brunetiére.” 
BRUNETIERE, F., La science et la religion. Paris, 1895. 
MAR aed La renaissance de Vidéalisme. Paris, 1896. 
oe Saha Le besoin de croire. Besancon, 1898. 
BAR AN Ris Aprés le procés: réponse 4 quelques intellectuels. Paris, 1898. 
ReaD Les raisons actuelles de croire. Lille, 1899. 
WEP Cas oy L’idée de solidarité. Toulouse, 1900. 
TN aS: Les motifs d’espérer. Lyons, 1901. 
re Discours de combat (4 series). Paris, 1900-1903. 
Arca tat L’Action sociale du christianisme. Paris, 1904. 
Aan ae Sur les chemins de la croyance. Paris, 1905. 
I list only those works of Brunetiére which show him as a Catholic apologist, and as 


a popularizer of the Philosophy of Action. Wilbois and de Sailly should also 
be mentioned as adherents of the school of the Philosophy of Action. 


VIII. On THE PHILOsoPHY OF ACTION, AND ITs RELATION 
TO MopERNISM AND PRAGMATISM 


1. ExposITIONs AND CRITIQUES OF THE PuiILosopHy oF ACTION 


BuonaiutTl, E., “La filosofia dell’azione.” Studi religiosi, V, 211-256. 

LrecLErE, A., “Le mouvement catholique kantien en France 4 l’heure 
présente.” Kantstudien, VII (1902). 

Goujon, ABBE, Les ennemis de la raison. La philosophie de la volonté 
et Papologétique de ’immanence. Chez l’auteur, 1906. 

Dre Tonquepec, La notion de la vérité dans la philosophie nouvelle. 
Paris, 1908. 


RucciERo, G. pE, Modern Philosophy. N. Y., 1921. 
P. 302. . 


2. ON THE PHILosopHY oF ACTION IN Its RELATION To CATHOLIC 
MopDERNISM 


CavaLLanti, ABBATE, Modernismo e Modernisti. Brescia, 1907. 
MERCIER, CARDINAL, Le modernisme. Brussels, 1908. 

Eng. translation, St. Louis, 1910. 
Havutcoeur, A., Autour du Modernisme. Paris, 1908. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 


Lesreton, J., L’Encyclique et la théologie moderniste. Paris, 1908. 
Gaupavup, “Les erreurs du modernisme.” La foi catholique, 1908-09. 
La foi catholique was founded to combat Modernism, and contains much inter- 


esting material. 

GopryeEz, J., The Doctrine of Modernism and its Refutation. Phila., 
1908. 

RicxaBy, J., The Modernist. London, 1908. 

TYRRELL, G., (translator) The Programme of Modernism. N. Y., 1908. 
The response of a group of Modernists to the Pope’s Encyclical, which is 
printed in full and examined point by point. 

BEauRREDON, C., Le modernisme, ou les bases de la foi. Paris, 1908. 

SaBATIER, P., Modernism. London, 1908. 

Rally eens Les Modernistes. Paris, 1909. 

Dexmont, T., Modernisme et Modernistes. Paris, 1909. 

Mavumus, E. V., Les Modernistes. Paris, 1909. 

Kuse x, J., Geschichte des katholischen Modernismus. Tiibingen, 1909. 
Pp. 89-105. 

Cauty, Mer., Libéralisme et Modernisme. Paris, 1910. 

VERMEERSCH, A., De modernismo tractatus. Bruges, 1910. 

SCHNITZER, J., “Der katholische Modernismus.” Zeitschrift fiir Politik, 
Ee(i9l1y: 

Dest er Der katholische Modernismus. Berlin, 1912. 

Anthology of Modernist writings, Klassiker der Religion series. 

TavERNIER, E., Le Modernisme. Paris, 1912. 

LosstEIn, P., Quelques enseignements du modernisme. Paris, 1912. 

Fontaine, J., La synthése du modernisme. Paris, 1912. 

Bampton, J. M., Modernism and Modern Thought. London, 1913. 

HovutTin, A., Histoire du modernisme catholique. Paris, 1913. 

The best history of the movement. Chaps. I and III make clear the relation of 
the Philosophy of Action to the other aspects of the Modernist movement. 
Besides the references given above, consult Denzinger’s Enchiridion for the 
Decree Lamentabili, the Encyclical Pascendi, and the Decree Sacrorum; see 
also the articles on Modernism in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and in Hastings? 


Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. In English, the best presentation of 
the Modernist position will be found in the works of George Tyrrell. 


3. On THE PHILosopHY oF ACTION IN ITs RELATION To PRAGMATISM 


SaILLy, B. pr, “Les éléments de la philosophie de l’action.” Avzmales de 
philosophie chrétienne, 151: 180-195 (1905). 

BourpEau, J., Pragmatisme et modernisme. Paris, 1908. 

LrEcLERE, A., Pragmatisme; Modernisme; Protestantisme. Paris, 1909. 

Hésert, M., Le Pragmatisme. Etude de ses divers formes anglo-améri- 
caines, francaises et italiennes et de sa valeur religieuse. 2nd ed., 
Paris, 1909. 

FouiL.tEE, A., La pensée et les nouvelles écoles anti-intellectualistes. 
2nd ed., Paris, 1911. 


314 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Boutrroux, E., Science et Religion dans la philosophie contemporaine. 
Paris, 1908. 
See Part II, Chap. III, “La Philosophie de l’Action.” | 

BERTHELOoT, R., Un Romantisme Utilitaire: étude sur le mouvement 
pragmatiste. 3 vols., Paris, 1913. Vol. III. 

STEBBING, L. S., Pragmatism and French Voluntarism. Cambridge, 1914. 

Spiriro, Uco, Il Pragmatismo nella Filosofia Contemporanea. Saggio 
critico, con Appendice Bibliografica. Florence, 1921. 
Note especially Part II, Chap. V, “Il Pragmatismo Religioso.” 

Leroux, E., Le Pragmatisme américain et anglais. Paris, 1923. 

Arcuno, O., La Filosofia dell’Azione e il Pragmatismo. Florence, 1924. 
A good bibliography is appended to this book. 


4 A .} 
WL aN 


eRe ply. 'p 





INDEX 


Abelard, 255, 256, 270. 

Absolute, the, 52, 61, 63, 76, 226, 241, 
242, 243, 293, 296; wv. God, Being, 
Infinite. 

Abstraction, 156; v. Reason. 

“Adéodat,” 87, 210, 211. 

“Adolphe,” 81. 

Affre, Mgr., 93. 

Aggregation, 122 ff., 156, 163; v. Analy- 
sis, Science, Logic. 

Agnosticism, 295, 296. 

Alexandrian Fathers, viii, 71, 99, 223, 
256, 270,282: 

All, the, 242-244. 

Ami de la Religion, 89, 263, 306. 

Analogy, method of, 70, 90, 102, 122, 
1235013072219-223,.250, 

Analysis and synthesis, 156, 162, 288. 

Ancillon, 57. 

Angels, 129, 131, 132. 

Azxnales de philosophie chrétienne, 31, 
$3; 291. 

Anti-intellectualism, ix, 41, 72, 75, 90, 
91, 96, 142, 159, 168, 262, 290; w. 
Reason, Fideism, Intuitionism, Tradi- 
tionalism, Voluntarism, Pragmatism. 

Antinomies, Kantian, 74, 144. 

Apologetics, 69, 174; non-argumentative, 
91, 209; of Bautain, in contrast with 
the old, 33 ff., 81, 94, 142, 201, 209 
ff.. 224, 231, 232, 247-250; of Cha- 
teaubriand, 6; of Frayssinous, 5, 32; 
of Laberthonniére and the Modernists, 
232, 294; of the heart and of the 
intelligence, 209 ff., 212; of the Scho- 
lastics, 31, 88, 95, 247-250; of the 
Traditionalists, 7 ff., 26, 31, 32, 258. 

Argument, futility of rational, 68, 69, 
POA a eeet 104, 17 55) 2255129255268, 
270, 282. 

Aristotle and Aristotelianism, 127, 142, 
161, 214, 246, 253, 255, 256, 264, 
268-270, 272-274, 277, 282, 285, 298. 

Asceticism, 77, 120. 

Atheism, 3, 18, 33, 72, 251. 

“Atheist Catholics,” 38. 

Attention, 152-154, 157. 

Authority, 8, 14, 18, 24, 61, 62, 75, 95, 
96, 100, 102, 104, 136-140, 149, 184, 
187, 19080198; :203,: 257, 258, 262; 


objective and subjunctive, 203; of the 


Catholic Church, 20, 22, 96, 100, 142,, 
203-207, 209, 262, 271; of the Pope, 
22; of Scripture, 205, 206, 229, 262; 
of tradition, 204, 262; wv. Liberty. 

Autonomy, 34, 61, 64, 78, 95, 104, 109, 
131, 190, 240, 278; wv. Spontaneity,, 
Liberty. 

Avenir, I, 28. 

Axioms, 78, 143, 144, 150, 168, 173, 

188, 259, 269, 272. 

Azais, 258. 
Baader, F., viii, 35, 49, 50, 51-54, 71,. 

E2000, P21, 22917 .262,1263. 

Bacony) Franks; 133523650237) 27 1: 
Ballanche,; P.-S:,. 16, 17)\23-25, 32, ‘83, 

258. 

Base and acid, 106, 109, 110, 118, 122,. 
128, 152; wv. Plasm, Being, Nature. 
Baudin, Eugéne, x, 62, 64, 73, 90, 138, 

1393-1769°.17750239.9303,.305; 

Bautain, Louis, 

Early life and philosophical training,. 
56-63. 

His conversion, and its effect upon his 
philosophy, 63-79, 103-105. 

Unsuccessful attempt to reform Catho- 
lic philosophy, 83-93, 256, 265, 283. 

Recantation, 93-97, 284. 

Later life, 97-101. 

Relations with his pupils, 80-83, 85- 
87, 97-99, 287, 288; v. Gratry, etc. 

Philosophical writings, 32, 57, 73, 81- 
82, 87, 91, 99-101, 303-306. 

As an apologist, 32-34, 79-81, 84, 209- 
232, 283; wv. Apologetics. 

As an educator, 86, 89, 92, 138-140. 

As an orator, 59, 101, 141. 

As a_ psychologist, 117, 
145 ff. 

General plan of his philosophy, 102, 
135, 213-219. 

Its negative, anti-intellectualistic as- 
pect, 75-79, 140 ff., 224 ff., 229 ff., 
24d ff... 265 i. 

Its constructive and eclectic aspects, 
75y. 002) fa 213 thee saeco 
265, 274 ff. 

His relations with Cousin and _ the 
Eclectic school, 56-60, 88, 245, 246, 
263, 264; with the Scotch realistic 
school, 57, 58, 236-238; with Kant, 


135, 144, 


318 


66, 74, 273, 274; with the Post- 
Kantian Idealists, 60-63, 238-245; 
with the German Catholic Roman- 
ticists, 71, 72, 262, 263; with the 
Traditionalists, 32, 186-188, 257- 
262, 285, 286. 

His hatred of Aristotle, 255, 256, 268, 
269; of eighteenth-century philoso- 
phy, 234-236;. of pantheism, 241- 
245; of scholasticism, 247-257. 

His Platonism, 74, 75, 109, 117. 

His political liberalism, 297. 

His attitude toward Biblical criticism, 
297. 

His influence, 294-298. 

Beauty, love of, 157, 158, 276; panthe- 
istic conception of, 243; wv. Dialectics, 
Good. 

Being, 61, 71, 78, 102, 105, 106, 109, 
118, 124, 129, 136, 161, 164, 176, 
1720 21 Zs 2198225, eh 2G; A287 8; 
287; and existence, 72, 128, 217-219; 
and life, 106 ff.; in general, 253, 254; 
v. God, Infinite, Absolute, Essence, 
Life. 

Belief, 169; wv. Faith. 

Bergson, ix, 105, 113, 142, 156, 159, 
162, 163, 167, 291, 292, 294-296. 

Berkeley, 151. 

Berlin Academists, 57. 

Berthelot, R., ix, 199, 295, 314. 

Besoin de croire, 31, 210; v. Need. 

Biran, Maine de, ix, 30, 293, 294. 

Blondel, M., x, 289-293, 295, 297, 310, 
311. 

Boehme, Jacob, 39, 43, 44, 50, 71, 72, 
263. 

Boersch, C., 60, 61, 306. 

Boéthius, 160, 161. 

Roisserée, the brothers, 40, 49. 

Bonald, Vicomte de, vii, viii, 6, 7-1, 
14-18, 25, 26, 32, 38, 185-187, 255, 
258, 259, 262, 285, 287; uv. Tradition- 
alism. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 4, 5, 7, 25, 282. 

Bonn, school of, vii, 46, 49, 55, 90, 262. 

Bonnechose, H. de, 86, 89, 91, 92, 98, 
282, 308. 

Ponnetty, A., 31, 83, 95, 285, 309. 

Bossuet, 17, 251. 

Boutroux, E., 290, 292-294. 

Bréhier, Prof., 43. 

Brentano, 40, 49. 

Brunetiére, F., 291, 312. 

Bunsen, Baron, 72. 

Bushnell, Horace, 231. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Cabalism, viii, 50, 71, 114, 216. 

Cabanis, 29, 30. 

Campaux, ‘A. 35, 57; 59) 60507 2e2er, 
302. 

Capacities, innate, 
Need. 

Carl, Adolphe, 81, 82, 85, 174-115, 139, 
L55y8216,,°3083 

Cartesian; v. Descartes. 

Categorical imperative, 47, 263. 

Catholicism, revival of, in France, 3 ff., 
53 ff.; in Germany, 36 ff.; and politi- 
cal conservatism, 4, 16, 18, 25, 27, 29, 
38; and political liberalism, 25 ff., 
297; and paganism, 21, 22, 255, 256, 
285; and Romanticism, 38 ff. 

Center, vital, 108, 133, 164, 217, 219; 
v. Foyer. 

Certitude, 19, 53, 54, 58, 59, 169, 174, 
175, 184, 190, 191, 793 #f., 210, 211, 
289, 293; and faith, 194; subjective 
and objective principles of, 193 ff.; 
three kinds of, 196, 197, 205; w. 
Truth, Knowledge. 

Charles X, 32. 

Chateaubriand, 6-7, 21, 29, 32, 37, 282. 
Choses de Vautre monde, 56, 57, 62, 
101, 130, 237,245, 265, 273; 303: 
Christ, Jesus, 229, 230, 257, 283, 297; 

resurrection of, 94. 

Christianity, 21, 30, 31, 34, 37; v. Reve- 
lation; “new,” 30; wv. Saint-Simon. 

Cicero, 62. 

Claudius, Matthias, 42. 

Clement; v. Alexandrian Fathers. 

Coe, G. A., 138. 

Cognitio centralis, 44. 

Cognition, 71, 145 ff... 175, 176; v. 
Knowledge. 

Coleridge, 161. 

Collins, Ross, x, 28, 302. 

Colmar, Megr., 55, 64, 65, 69, 86. 

Common consent, Common sense; v. Sens 
commun. 

Comte, Auguste, ix, 23, 30, 234, 265, 
290. 

Conception, 118, 120, 121, 148, 250-152, 
183, 188, 190; wv. Generation, Thought. 

Concepts, 47, 48, 154; and ideas, wv. 
Ideas; and percepts, 199, 200. 

Cencordat, 4. 

Condillac, 12, 29, 30, 32, 153, 163, 234, 
236, 257, 26%, 276: 

Conscience, 8, 47, 197, 198, 206, 207, 
227, 248, 278; intellectual, 196, 203. 

Contemplation, 154, 160, 183. 


187,.. 2263 \04) Ideas 


INDEX 


Contract, social, 8, 234; wv. Rousseau. 

Cousin, Victor, 30, 34, 35, 56, 59, 60, 
88, 102, 234, 245, 265; wv. Eclecti- 
cism. 

Critical Philosophy, 66, 74, 77, 269; vw. 
Kant. 

Critique of Pure Reason, 66, 74, 274; 
of Practical Reason, 66; v. Kant. 

Crystallization, 110, 122. 

Cuvier, 45. . 

Damiron, 5, 57, 73, 233, 301. 

Darwin and Darwinism, 134, 227. 

Death, 109, 120, 121, 132; wv. Immor- 
tality. 

Deduction and induction, 155, 156, 162, 
188; v. Logic, Sylogism. 

Definition, futility of, 165. 

Deishi e318, 33y Ole eat, 229s eeo, 
250. 

Delbos, V., 9, 310. 

Democracy, 8, 16, 23, 28, 100, 186, 297. 

Demonstration and monstration, 162, 
165. 

Denzinger, 94. 

Dependence, 75, 294; v. Humility. 

Der contraponirte Gott, 48. 

Descartes, and the Cartesian philosophy, 
vii, viii, 19, 46-49, 52, 127, 170, 247, 
261, 271, 272, 285; and French Scho- 
lasticism, 31, 251-255, 257; vw. Doubt, 
Cartesian. 

Destiny, 133, 134, 249, 261. 

Determinism, 239. 

Development, 77, 78, 121, 1735, 148-150, 
Peep ae o0,157, 212; 243,261, 
275; embryonic, 108, 110 ff.; physical, 
116 ff., 275; mental and spiritual, 117 
ff., 145 £f., 276 ff.; v. Evolution. 

Dewey, John, ix, 199, 245, 290, 291. 

Dialectical ws. positive method, 256. 

Dialectics, 255, 285, 296; of the intelli- 
gence and of the will, 159; of beauty, 
161; wv. Logic. 

Diderot, 3. 

Ding an sich; v. Thing-in-itself. 

Doctores biblici vs. doctores sententiarii, 
Baby 255- 

Déllinger, 49, 95. 

Dogma, 150, 205, 210, 218, 222, 223; 
evolution of, 55. 

Dogmatism, 19, 104, 254, 278; “moral,” 
292-294. 

Doubt, Cartesian, 46, 91, 170, 252, 261. 

Dualism, 49, 52, 124, 224. 

Duchesne, Abbé, 297. 

Duhem, 292. 


319 


Durkheim, 260. 

Earth-Spirit, 129, 137; v. World-Spirit. 

Eckhart, Meister, 50, 71. 

Eclecticism, 30, 32, 59, 73, 88, 161, 234,, 
238, 245, 246, 257, 263-265, 282. 
Education, 26, 27, 82, 83, 138-140, 148. 

Ego and non-Ego, 226, 278; v. Self. 

Ego(t)ism, 234, 239-241, 276; v. Indi- 
vidualism, Autonomy. 

Fichendorff, 40. 

Eidos, Platonic, 125; v. Form, Idea. 

Eighteenth century, philosophy of the, vii,, 
8, 12, 29, 46, 202, 224, 233, 234-236, 
241; wv. Condillac. 

Elan vital, 104, 105, 110, 111, 113,. 
124; wv. Bergson, Vital principle. 

Emerson, 161, 177, 185, 268. 

Empiricism, ix, 10, 18, 128, 199, 202,, 
236, 294. 

Encyclical Hterni Patris, 284, 298; Pas- 
cendi, 296. 

Encyclopedists, the, 265. 

Enlightenment, the, (Aufklarung), vii). 
37, 47, 49. 

Enseignement de la philosophie en France 
au xixe siecle (Ens. Phil. F.), 32, 87- 
SAMLGGS Oss Lonel os caestlas 2505 
PRI ORY EAD Rey) Loe ee 

Enseignement philosophique de... Bau- 
tain (Ens. Phil. B.), 80, 89, 115, 122,, 
141,° 162," 163,166; 1845189, 191, 
LOS SEL OFS IDR Mies od aah Lash dk Oe 
220, 221, 304-307. 

Epicurus, 125, 246, 276. 

Equality, 23, 62, 73. 

Erdmann, 57. 

Ere Nouvelle, V, 28. 

Error, possibility of, 198. 

Essence and existence, 108; v. Being. 

“Eudore,” 81, 211. 

Evidence, intuitive, 134, 155, 169, 184,. 
187, 198, 200, 201, 258; w. Intuition. 

Evil, 129, 131, 132, 192, 247, 250; pan-- 
theistic conception of, 243. 

Evolution, 77, 135, 145, 148, 163, 167,. 
185, 274, 275; of the Absolute, 242; 
v. Development. 

Experience, 13, 30, 70, 94, 140, 143, 145, 
146,150, (155, 168, -180,7 196, 9 197,, 
199, 202, 219, 252, 272; and knowl- 
edge, 146; future, 201, 203; religious, 
218; v. Empiricism. 

Explanation, 154, 158. 

Eye, psychic, 160. 

Faculties, cognitive, 143, 144, 150, 153,. 
189, 226, 237, 275, 277, 288; evolu- 


320 


tion of the, 145-148; higher, 44, 157- 
161, 190, 238, 254, 274, 277; innate, 
162; wv. Imagination, Reason, Intelli- 
gence, Faith. 

Faiths 4195057,.077, 2110, vl 6S 401 68-141, 
224, 236, 282, 295; and authority, 
262; and intelligence, 157, 170, 171; 
and knowledge, 78, 157, 166, 169- 
TFS / O09 e200 eek colo 
222, 252, 279, 289; and love, 159, 
173; and will, 171, 172, 293; as a 
cognitive faculty, 44, 71, 208, 279; 
blind (fides implicita), 78, 143, 168, 
186, 201, 208, 209; in self ws. faith 
in God, 294; primacy of, 44, 76, 168, 
173-175, 259; wv. Reason, Fideism, 
Feeling, Taste. 

Fall, of\man; 224131, 5135, 279 otethe 
World-Spirit, 130. 

Fatalism, 34, 254. 

Fechner, 129. 

Fecundation, 107, 109, 119, 126, 128, 
148-151; wv. Stimulation. 

Feeling,):76-79;.145; (1525, 155, 17020133: 
192, 198, 199, 219; wv. Taste, Faith, 
Intuition, Evidence, Religion. 

Ferraz, M., 104, 143, 186, 187, 286 ff., 
S01 30837309. 

Fichte, 57, 60, 71, 103, 138, 145, 146, 
167, 239, 241. 

Fideism, viii, 97, 142, 143, 767 f., 209, 
287, 296; wv. Faith. 

First Cause, 225, 248, 272; wv. God. 

Fiske, John, 227. 

Fliche, Mme., 64, 71, 303. 

Foisset, M., 5, 26, 303. 

Foisset, Th., 87, 88, 302. 

Fonds Bautain, 62, 72 ff., 84, 95, 115, 
131, 143, 144, 163 ff., 174 ff, 191, 
197, 198). 205¢ 206021) Sufix 222 Fe 
230, 235, 236, 240, 241, 249, 250, 
2595 107 Oy SUS SUD 

Fonsegrive, G., 291, 310-312. 

Form, | 120, 326; ¢1285::148, 2263) 227, 
242; and life, 113, 219, 241; and 
spirit, 182, 214, 216, 217; general and 
particular, 150; wv. Eidos, Substance, 
Being, Nature, Plasm. 

Fouillée, 290, 313. 

Feyer, 105-108, 111, 112, 141, 146, 163, 
219, 236; wv. Center. 

Trancke, 42. 

Frayssinous, 5, 29, 32. 

Freedom, 140, 222; wv. Liberty. 

Free-will, 34; wv. Liberty. 

Freud, 114. 

Froebel, 139. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Functions, organic and mental, 116, 117, 
145, 147, 190; instrumental character 
of, 112, 147, 159. 

Galileo, 13. 

Gallicanism, 91. 

Gallitzin, Princess, 42, 43. 

Galvani, 45. 

Generation, 109; wv. Conception. 

Genius, 80, 151, 158, 162, 177, 180- 
185, 187, 190, 202;.207, 2216-5242. 
243, 269. 

Germ and sperm, 128, 148 ff.; v. Being 
and life. 

Gerson, 161. 

Gilson, 298. 

Gioberti, 287. 

Gnosis, 223; wv. Science. 

God, attributes of, 225; existence of, 5, 
47, 52, 72, 75-79, 93, 94, 168, 188, 
190, 209, 224-228, 247-250, 252, 261, 
272, 286, 288; experience of, 181, 
200, 201, 214, 219, 272; knowledge 
of, 52, 70, 177, 237; (of, Nature.eue. 
the God of Man, 248-250, 255, 272; 
v. Absolute, Being, Infinite. 

Gorres, viii, 38, 49. 

Goethe, 43-45, 104. 

Golden Age, 14, 15. 

Good, the True, and the Beautiful, the, 
158.1615) 171, 5195, %218 9-209. 

Goschler, Isidore, 81, 83, 85, 86, 89, 91, 
241, 244, 308. 

Gospels; wv. Scriptures. 

Goyau, G., 36, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 49, 
50, 3302, 310. 

Grand Séminaire, 55, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 
254. 

Gratry, Alphonse, viii, 86, 98, 162, 186, 
213-215, 216, 217, 286-289, 294, 309. 

Gregory IX, 255, 256. 

Giinther, Anton, 48, 49, 52, 54. 

Guizot, 35. 

Kamann, 42. 

Harnack, 256, 267. 

Heart, 6, 39, 87, 79, 158, 176, 205, 210, 
212, 221, 269; ws. the head, 77, 112, 
288; wv. Feeling, Faith. 

Hegel, 34, 35, 39, 44, 51, 52, 60, 71, 
102, 129, 135, 164, 239-241, 245, 265, 
283. 

Heiler, F.j322, 293. 

Hellenism vs. Hebraism, 256, 266, 267, 
283, 284; v. Traditionalism and Ra- 
tionalism. 

Helvetius, 234. 

Herder, 37. 45. 


INDEX 


Hermes, Georg, vii, 46-48, 54, 90, 91, 
262. 

Hoffman, 50, 53. 

Holbach, d’, 3. 

Houtin, 289, 297, 313. 

Hugo, Victor, 30, 80, 177. 

Humann, Georges, 35, 64. 

Humann, Mlle. Louise, 34, 35, 64-73, 
84-87, 97, 104, 212, 215, 235, 262, 
27350003, 

Humanism, 293, 294. 

Hume, ix, 180, 229. 

Humility, 75, 95, 105, 110, 208, 229, 
282; wv. Submission, Dependence, Re- 
ceptivity. 

Idealism, viii, 19, 30, 33, 49, 55, 60, 66, 
72, 104, 180, 233, 238-245, 279, 282; 
v. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; and real- 
ism, 292; ancient and modern, 279. 

“Tdea, The,” 164, 223, 239-245, 279. 

Ideas, 159, 170, 177, 180-184, 204, 217, 
218, 221, 242, 279, 280;.¥v.. Form, 
Capacities, Need, Notions; and ideals, 
177, 192, 215, 226, 240, 268; and 
realities, 192; and sensations, 30; di- 
vine, 127, 179, 183, 273; generating 
(idées-méres), 102, 103, 121, 124, 125, 
138, 212, 225, 260, 280, 287; innate, 
Behe, wks tb, 149.) 177,187,195, 
196, 204, 217, 262, 272, 286; Pla- 
tonic, 125, 127, 161; transcendental, 
60, 222; ws. concepts or notions, 157, 
159, 235. 

Illumination, 183, 211. 

Illuminism, 185, 207; wv. Light. 

Images, 149, 159, 161, 188, 276; w. 
Ideas. 

Imagination, 120, 159-161, 243, 276, 279. 

Immortality, 22, 34, 224, 237, 238, 252; 
v. Death. 

Impressions, sense, 154; wv. Senses. 

Inanimate, the, 128; wv. Inorganic. 

Incarnation, the, 22, 33. 

Index, the, 92, 208. 

Individuality, 113, 116, 126, 132, 152. 

Individualism, 104; wv. Autonomy, Ego- 
(t)ism. 

Infallibility, three kinds of, 53. 

Infinite, the, 31, 40, 41, 48, 76, 133, 
054155, LS lye LS, 224; 2255-242, 
243, 245; craving for the, 195, 210, 
222; “men of the,” 158, 180; “ray 
of the,” 171; v. God, Absolute. 

Ingold, Father, 98, 99, 302. 

Inorganic, the, 122, 123, 152; wv. Inani- 
mate, Panvitalism. 


Sak 


Insight, immediate, 77, 78; v. Intuition, 
Intelligence, Evidence. 

Inspiration, 177-183; wv. Revelation. 

Instinct, 13, 14, 135, 243, 244. 

Intellect, 145, 205; v. Mind, Reason. 

Intelligence, 67, 134, 137, 144, 147, 152, 
154, 157-167, 170, 171, 183, 184, 189, 
190F AU Js Aue Loy 22lye25e259,262, 
269, 273, 279; wv. Intuition, Reason, 
Faith. 

Interactionism, 124; v. Mind and Body. 

Introspection, 178, 236. 

Intuition, 13-16, 24, 39, 44, 57, 62, 68, 
69, 90, 159, 167, 176, 180, 183, 214, 
239, 254, 280, 284, 287, 288, 296; 
intellectual, 182, 240, 253; of the in- 
telligence and of the soul, 183; w. 
Intelligence. 

Intuitionism, ix, 142, 759 ff., 176, 186, 
259, 262, 284, 286, 288. 

Intussusception, 103, 106, 116, 122, 163, 
169; v. Aggregation, Life. 

Jacobi, 44, 47, 57, 71, 161. 

Jamblichus, 279. 

James, William, ix, x, 197, 199, 290- 
296; and Bautain, 199-203; and Le 
Roy, 294-296. 

Jones, Rufus, 227, 228. 

Jouffroy, 57, 73. 

Judgment, 155, 157, 172, 188, 190, 204; 
of relation, 153; synthetic a priori, 
150. 

Juilly, college of, 97, 114, 216, 305, 
306. 

“Julien,” 81, 210. 

Jung-Stilling, 42. 

Justice, 138. 

Justin Martyr, 99. 

Juxtaposition, 122, 163; v. Aggregation. 

Kant and Kantianism, viii, ix, 12, 30, 
39, 44, 46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 
50.760, 024, foe) 90s ile tes 245 
14950172, 2189 7 237g odo ens eros 
VTA aD YARDS A KTR D AE PO © 9 14 
cal Philosophy. 

Kepler, 13. 

Knowledge, theory of, 19, 52, 53, 82, 
139), 1425" 2092 (239) 2575, 28sec ss 
and experience, 146; a@ priori and a 
posteriori, 150; mediate and immedi- 
ate, 160; v. Cognition, Faith. 

Kritik der Reinen Vernunft; v Critique. 

Krummacher, 72. 

Kuhn, 54. 

Laberthonniére, L., 114, 232, 256, 283, 
291 ff., 311; v. Philosophy of Action, 
Modernism. 


322 


Lacordaire, viii, 17-19, 28, 29, 33, 87, 
92, 297. 

Laforét, 94, 285; wv. Louvain. 

Lamartine, 177, 282. 

Lamennais, viii, 16-29, 32, 50, 53, 80, 
87-89, 186, 187, 190, 191, 196, 197, 
233, 257-259, 261, 285, 297; v. Sens 
commun, Traditionalism. 

La Motte-Fouqué, 40. 

Language, theory of, 10, 11, 15, 83, 139, 
Loo SS 155) 1 50n ty 4 2ot, TLOO: 
187, 204, 226, 259-261, 276; v. Bonald. 

Laromiguiére, 30. 

Leclére, 292, 312, 313. 

Legitimism, 25, 33. 

Leibnitz, 43, 45. 

Leo Xl? 

Leo XIII, 29, 284. 

Le Roy, E., x, 290-297, 311; and William 
James, 294-296. 

Lessing, 45. 

Lewel, Jules, 81, 85, 91; his brother 
Nestor, 86. 

Liberalism, political, 27-29; theological, 
29; uv. Catholicism, and. 

Liberty, 23, 24, 27, 28, 60-62, 73, 100, 
103,° 258,.2613), moral 152." 1533" of 
the press, 26; v. Authority, Autonomy, 
Freedom. 

Lichtenberger, H., 36, 38, 43, 302. 

Liebermann, B. F. L., 55, 89, 254, 303. 

Lite /isy S200 sl dU oy te tO. 
LIS TID Theh eee eee 20st sO. 
140, 147, 156, 215, 216, 261; and 
mind, 147; divine, 51, 124, 130, 133, 
137, 138; essence, existence and, 130, 
225; general and particular, 127, 152; 
v. Elan vital, Being. 

Light) 69-71, 0106; (LOsl ol ld eel oes 
160, 170, 175, 781-185, 191, 204, 211, 
223, 228, 273, 280, 289; and life, 71; 
and the Word, 184, 185; wv. Illu- 
minism, Mysticism. 

Locke, John, 10, 12, 57, 145, 149. 

Logic, 135, 188, 252, 2553 “dialectical,” 
288; of intelligence and of reason, 
162, 166 ff., 288; of organism and 
of mechanism, 162, 166; wv. Dialectics, 
Syllogism. 

Loisy, Abbé, 297. 

Lombard, Peter, 270. 

Touis 5 V Lis eos tes 

Louvain, school of, 97, 284, 285. 

Love, 134, 138, 158, 159, 183; and fear, 
in education, 139, 140; and _ intelli- 
gence, 279; law of, 138. 

Lyman, E. W., 199. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


McGiffert, A. C., 44, 45. 

Maistre, Joseph de, vii, viii, 6-16, 17, 
LSS 521, 623-255. 326385855 aes ogee 
258, 262, 285; wv. Traditionalism. 

Mal de siécle, 31, 80, 138, 210. 

Malebranche, viii, 176, 251, 272, 273, 
284, 289. 

Man, idea of, 125, 134, 222. 

Manichaeism, 224, 250. 

Manzoni, 282. 

Maret, Abbé, 28, 29, 286, 287, 308, 309. 

Martignac, 27. 

Mary, the Virgin, 115. 

Massillon, 17. 

Masson, P. M., 6, 301. 

Materialism, 29, 30, 33, 46, 74, 83, 124, 
234, 238, 239, 241, 242, 276, 283. 
Mathematics, 150, 202, 213 ff., 217, 219; 
transcendental, 219; v. Philosophy, Sci- 

ence. 

Mayence, school of, 54, 55. 

Mechanism, 39; vw. Organism. 

Melun, Vicomte de, 28. 

Ménégoz, E., 168. 

Mental healing, 119. 

“Mental matrix,” 149; v. Understanding. 

Merian, 57. 

Mezzofante, Cardinal, 92. 

Microcosm and Macrocosm, 48, 129, 132, 
PAN eR ES 

Milhaud, G., 290, 292. 

Mind, 146, 158, 159, 189, 190, 208, 
222; wv. Intellect, Thought, Reason. 

Miracles, 94, 228-231. 

Modernism, Catholic, ix, 55, 95, 142, 
199, 256, 283, 284, 290, 296 f., 312, 
SWE 

Moehler, viii, 54, 72, 90, 94, 95, 263, 
302. 

Monads, 128. 

Monism, 44, 49, 124. 

Montaigne, 273. 

Montalembert, 28. 

Montesquieu, 9. 

Morale de DPévangile .. . (Mor. Ev. P, 
Mor. Ev. D.), 82, 99, 144, 170, 180, 
230, 243, 244, 246, 264, 265, 274, 
2755. 283,303, 207. 

Munich, school of, viii, 46, 49, 50, 55, 
262, 263; v. Baader. 

Mysticism, viii, ix, 14, 39, 41-43, 46, 
69-71; (161; 176,),177,, 180,01 855<219, 
239, 240, 262, 288; wv. Illuminism, 
Pragmatism, Knowledge. 

Natural religion, 8, 18, 39. 

Naturalism, 294. 

Nature, 8, 48, 49, 51, 67, 70, 71, 75, 


INDEX 


78, 104, 125, 127, 134, 735, 148, 151, 
154, 156, 214-223, 227, 230, 272, 276; 
and spirit, 127 ff.; God and, 78, 130, 
248, 267, 272; idea of, 125 ff.; laws 
TAS, 955° 250,%235237 9) eo Spir- 
itual law; logic of, 148, 156, 163; 
philosophy of, 82, 214-217, 219; state 
Orr 85°. 155/260; 

Need, sense of, 195, 226 ff., 250. 

Newman, viii, ix, 59, 99, 297. 

Nietzsche, 104. 

Notions, 159, 188, 226, 253; wv. Ideas. 

Noumena(1), 46, 48, 126, 221, 236, 237; 
v. Phenomena(1). 

Novalis, 41, 43. 

Objects, 126, 153; intelligible, 184, 200, 
218; natural, 200. 

Cbjectivism, 241. 

Occasionalists, 128. 

Occultism, 39, 42, 71, 230. 

Oetinger, F. C., 42, 43, 50. 

Qllé-Laprune, L., 289, 290, 294, 298, 
309, 310. 

Ontologism, 284, 287. 

Organism and environment, 135; devel- 
opment of the, 54; vs. mechanism, 39, 


Berea On Siu 54-0104. 1 157\162,4163, 


Disease ise avy 255;2564 "eg. Loge, ° 


Romanticism. 

Organs, sensory, as distinguished from 
senses, 147, 178; wv. Sensations, Senses, 
Pressentiments. 

Origen; v. Alexandrian Fathers. 

Overbeck, F., 40, 41. 

Ozanam, 28, 33. 

Pacte de famille, 87, 97, 98. 

Pantheism, 33, 44, 46, 49-52, 144, 224, 
241-246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 253-255, 
263, 265, 279, 286; and Scholasticism, 
247 ff.; and Rationalism, 251 ff.; Ro- 
mantic, 242, 263; Spinozistic, 254, 272; 
spiritualistic, 254. . 

Panpsychism, 110, 124. 

Panvitalism, 102, 122-124, 248. 

Parallelism, 124; wv. Interactionism. 

Pascal, viii, 6, 172, 222, 250, 273, 284. 

Paulsen, 124. 

Pellico, Sylvio, 282. 

Perceptions, 148, 188, 276; supersensible, 
178; wv. Pressentiments. 

Perrone, 93. 

Pestalozzi, 139. 

Petit Séminaire, 32, 86, 89, 90, 92, 251. 

Phenomena(1), 144, 161, 173, 180, 221, 
237, 242, 279; v. Noumena(1). 

Philo, 71. 


Das 


Philosophie de Lyon, 89, 251-255, 272, 
273: 

Philosophie du Christianisme (Phil. Chr.), 
SPOT WOZ SO 0 13k, 160s 169, 
184, 194, 196, 204-206, 208-212, 234, 
236, 237-240, 242-245, 247, 249-256, 
263, 265-271, 274, 282, 304. 

Philosophie morale (Phil. Mor.), 99, 171- 
173, 181, 195, 196, 304. 

Philosophy, 75, 213, 219; and mathe- 
matics, 213-217; and science, 123, 125, 
215-217, 292; and theology, 214-223, 
271, 272; of history, 266; of nature, 
v. Nature; true and false, 265-274. 

“Philosophy of Action,” ix, 290-297, 
312-314; wv. Blondel, Le Roy, Prag- 
matism, etc. 

Pietism, 42, 44. 

Pius IX, 100. 

Plasm, 106, 110, 111, 126, 127; and 
life, 128; and spirit, 106, 110; w. 
Base, Nature, Being. 

Plato and Platonism, viii, ix, 62, 71, 74, 
rine (1 Sea We Oy bar OR A Ce en PR CR 
171, 176, 180, 186, 190, 216, 246, 
256, 264, 268-270, 272-274, 276, 279- 
282, 284, 285, 298; neo-Platonism, 39, 
TA EOO YS TNL SA poy cae see 20 ts 

Plotinus, 69, 161, 279, 283. 

Poincaré, 292. 

Point, mathematical, 108, 122, 140, 165, 
166; saline, 110, 122, 149; wv. Center, 
Foyer. 

Polarization, 51, 103, 110-112, 129, 140, 
167 po2eks 

Poser, meaning of, 146. 

Positivism, ix, 295; the new, 292. 

Postulates, 143, 172, 228, 269; v. Ax- 
ioms. 

Potentiality, 106, 109, 111, 217, 218, 
275; and actuality, 127, 128, 130, 142; 
or latency, 126. 

Praeambula fidei, 209. 

Pragmatism, ix, x, 142, 171, 172, 191, 
199, 202, 203, 228, 290-294, 313, 314; 


and mysticism, 228; semi-, 190 ff., 
288, 295. 

Pragmatisme, meaning of, in French, 
292-295. 


Prayer, 68, 154, 210. 

Pressentiments, 173, 179. 

Prime Mover, 247; wv. First Cause. 

Principles, 77, 193, 222, 236, 237, 259, 
272, 289; active and passive, 105, 
106, 114, 115, 136; male and female, 


324 


106, 114; objective and 
105-107, 109-111, 113. 

Proclus, 279. 

Progress, 8, 24, 25, 135, 204, 206; vw. 
Evolution. 

Propositions générales sur la vie, 82, 
105-123, 145. 

Pseudo-Dionysius, 71. 

Psychologie Expérimentale (Psych. Exp.), 
OOF TOD LO7al Li gel 25-1 Zoe soelg5, 
140, 144, 146-160, 171, 172, 177, 178, 
181-184, 200-203, 227, 236, 239, 265, 
273, 275-281. 

Psychology, genetic, of cognition, 145 
ff., 156, 158; metaphysics and, 275, 
281; of Kant, 144; of the Scholas- 
tics, 253; of the Scotch school, 236 
ff.; pure and experimental, 135; tran- 
scendental, 178. 

Fythagoras and Pythagoreanism, 
115, 216, 267-269, 279. 

Quélen, Mgr., 33, 34. 

Radiation, 107, 116, 141, 147, 149, 228; 
v. Center, Development. 

Raess, André, 55, 89, 93, 254, 303. 

Rapport, idea of, 21, 50, 70, 116, 125, 
130, 135-138. 


subjective, 


114, 


Rationalism, 19, 31, 39, 41, 43-48, 54, ° 


72, 84, 91, 96, 97, 180, 251-257, 262, 
265 ff., 273, 277-279, 282, 284-288; 
and pantheism, 251-257; and Platon- 
ism, 273; and Traditionalism, 265 ff.; 
semi-, 286. 

Ratisbonne, Th., 81, 83, 85, 91, 98, 139, 
308. 

Ravaisson, ix, 294. 

Reaction, necessity of, 148, 151-153, 181; 
v. Stimulation. 

Realism, 136, 238, 239; Scotch, viii, 21, 
30-327 58,023 0-296, 2576 

Realpolitik, 245. 

Reason, 47, 60-62, 134, 146, 155-157, 
159, 160, 188-190, 276-279, 286-288; 
and authority, 14, 24, 256, 271; and 
experience, 154, 156; and faith, 8, 18, 
39, 44, 47, 50, 58, 59, 62, 63, 69, 
Fan THe TON 820 91 5/9555 94) 9097, 
104, 143, 159, 165, 167-176, 190, 229, 
252, 259, 271; and intelligence, 159- 
167, 189, 288; and language, 260; 
and revelation, 176 ff.; critique of the, 
142 ff., 253; discursive, 13-15, 69, 
189, 288; laws of the, 227; meta- 
physical impotence of the, 9, 46, 65, 
66, 72-74, 76, 77, 93, 94, 100, 743, 
144, 218, 225, 269, 274, 293; practi- 
cal, 47, 144, 276; “things of,” 259; vw. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Faith, Reasoning, Rationalism, Kant. 
Reasoning, 19, 44, 76, 94, 144, 148, 155, 
157, 160, 168, 188-190, 224, 229. 

Recapitulation, principle of, 275. 

Receptivity, 75, 105, 109, 168, 169, 190; 
v. Humility, Faith. 

Redemption, 129, 131. 

Reflection, 153-156, 160, 169, 173, 222, 
223; v. Thought, Reasoning. 

Régny, Abbé de, 33, 34, 56, 59, 64, 65, 
67-69, 72, 80, 81, 83, 85, 91, 94-98, 
101). 135,°-17639 2079 22085 302, 

Reid wens sg: 

Relativism, 31, 191, 198, 293, 295. 

Religion of feeling, 39, 42. 

Reminiscence, Platonic, 218. 

Renaissance, 276. 

Renouvier, ix, 295. 

Revelation, 74, 93, 94, 170, 176-187, 
206; and tradition, 184; extraordinary, 
178, 179; Mosaic, 229; primitive, 10, 
16, 21, 24, 31, 185, 267; truth of the 
Christian, 224, 228-231. 

Revue Européenne (Rev. Eur.), 31, 35, 
53, 54, 71, 72, 87, 88, 121, 130, 143, 
186, 250, '259;'261, 262,°26539306, 

Revue politique et littéraire, 289. 

Revue philosophique, 290. 

Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 291, 
292, 296. 

Riambourg, 84, 144, 249, 258. 

Richter, Jean-Paul, 43. 

Ritschl, Albrecht, 246, 256, 267. 

Rochette, Paul, 232, 307. 

Rohan, Cardinal de, 86, 89. 

Romanticism, viii, ix, 24, 30, 33, 35, 38 
ff., 47, 49, 54, 55, 71, 80, 81, 89, 
91, 104, 127, 130, 139, 161, 177, 185, 
199, 210, (211, °230, 823 1fa233 een 
236, 239, 242, 246, 254, 263, 265, 
276, 285; German Catholic, 284; logic 
of, 164; neo-, 284. 

Rosmini, 287. 

Rousseau, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 24, 42, 
43, 104, 139. 

Royce, J., 132, 191, 204. 

Royer-Collard, 21, 30, 58. 

Rozaven, Father, 98, 99, 102. 

Sabatier, Auguste, 95, 168. 

Sailer, Father, 42. 

Sailly, B. de, 290-294, 312, 313. 

St. Anselm, vii, 161. 

St. Augustine, viii, 99, 161, 186, 256, 
265, 270. 

St. Bernard, 161, 256. 

St. Bonaventura, 256. 

Saint-Laurent, 73. 


INDEX 


Saint-Louis, Messieurs de, 86, 90, 92. 

Saint-Martin, 14, 50, 263. 

Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 24. 

Saint-Simon, 30, 202, 231. 

St. Theresa, 69. 

St. Thomas, vii, viii, 100, 161, 218, 256, 
264, 270, 298. 

St. Vincent of Paul 296. 

Sand, George, 30. 

Sangnier, Marc, 29, 297. 

Santayana, George, 12, 239. 

Savoyard Vicar, 3; v. Rousseau. 

Skepticism, 9, 18, 19, 31, 57, 66, 72, 73, 
Pier el oa a3,\ 2735 2/ 9) 201293. 

Schelling, 44, 47, 49, 50, 52-54, 57, 71, 
Five 01 35,1675 177, 214.4239-247, 

Schiller F2C.S.5ix, 290; 291,..293. 

Schlegel, Friedrich, 40, 43, 177. . 

Schleiermacher 36, 43, 44, 71, 142, 218, 
241, 246. 

Schmid, A., 36, 48, 301. 

Scholasticism, vii, viii, 31, 32, 46, 47, 
Peon 05. 142, 2a 2 aoe 4 7 
257, 270-272, 274, 285, 293; Bautain’s 
definition of, 252; neo-, 142, 284, 285; 
pantheism and, 251-255. 

Science, and theology, 220-222, 272; 
validity of natural, 13, 157, 166, 180, 
i 6251), a2 3% 237 241,.271,. 292; 
293; v. Mathematics, Philosophy. 

Science vs. connaissance, 159, 163, 217, 
223, 235; v. Gnosis. 

Scott, Walter, 282. 

Scotus Erigena, 71. 

Scriptures, 67, 74, 205, 206, 210, 212, 
224, 228-230, 270, 271. 

Self, the, 152, 154, 169, 226, 227, 241; 
existence of, 57, 180; wv. Ego. 

Self-consciousness, 109, 118, 131, 133, 
152-154, 178, 277; of the Absolute, 
243. 

Self-expression, 104; wv. Individualism. 

Sens commun (common sense or com- 
mon consent), 20-22, 53, 57, 88, 186, 
190, 196, 197, 202, 204, 225, 237, 
257-259, 291, 293; v. Lamennais. 

Sensations, 30, 148, 190. 

Senses, 74, 112, 120, 134, 145-148, 154, 
TG 178, 2285,00189;) 218; 2783" v. 
Organs. 

Sensibility, 131, 133, 147, 205. 

Sensorium commune, 146; 147; v. Un- 
derstanding. 

Sensualism, 29, 180, 234, 275. 

Sentimentalists, 246. 

Sex, 106, 110, 113-115, 120; wv. Prin- 


ciples, male and female. 


325 


Socrates, 123, 267, 268, 270, 274. 

Soul, 147 ff., 172, 180, 190, 210, 215, 
227, 236, 253; relation to mind and 
body, 108, 116, 118, 119, 121, 124, 
134, 145, 219, 248; wv. Mind. 

Space, 129-131, 132, 133, 219, 254; vw. 
Time. 

Spencer, Herbert, 167. 

Spener, 42. 

Spinoza and Spinozism, 33, 39, 44, 45, 
520254, 2555) 272,296. 

Spirit, 48, 49, 106, 118, 121, 126-129, 
Mote S6al4 ye 216, 5 2bee eee e eal 
animal, 112, 127, 134; matter and, 
128, 147, 242, 254, 277; nature and, 
125; v. Life, Form. 

Spiritism, 124. 

Spiritualism, 29, 33, 241, 279. 

Spiritual law, in the natural world, 70, 
T3p Ose 10S A290 220-223.0250 5.00, 
Nature, World. 

Spontaneity, absolute, 60, 75, 78, 97, 138, 
190, 278; limited or conditional, 75, 
S20 100 103,°113; 138,222,246; of 
the knowing subject, 238; v. Autonomy, 
Receptivity. 

Staél, Mme. de, 30, 64. 

Stahl, 108. 

State, the, 244, 245. 

Staudenmaier, 37, 54. 

Stebbing, L. S., 293, 314. 

Stewart, Dugald, 57, 58. 

Stimulation, necessity of external, 105, 
LOGS RYT IS loos 12GB La 1: 
187, 246, 278, 281; wv. Fecundation, 
Spontaneity, Life. 

Stirner, 104. 

Stoicism, 134, 264, 277. 

Strasbourg Philosophy, 79, 83, 289. 

Strasbourg School, 79, 81, 82, 115, 214, 
290, 296. 

Subconscious, the, 178. 

Sublimination, 120. 

Subjectivity, 52. 

Subjectivism, 239-241, 277; and object- 
ivism, 292. 

Submission, 209, 222; wv. Humility. 

Substance, 126, 128, 129, 134, 144, 154, 
213, 247, 253; v. Base, Nature, Plasm. 

Supernatural vs. natural, I RUIMIP ES be 

Supernaturalism, 50; relative, 50, 51, 231. 

Swedenborg, 43. 

Syllogism, 76, 79, 162, 188, yAY 2535 
255, 269, 271; v. Logic, Reasoning. 

Symbolism, 220, 242. ; 

Systole and diastole, 117; v. Life, Va-et- 


vient. 


326 


Tabula rasa, 149, 187, 238, 261. 

Taste, 78, 155,170, 172) 183, 186, 192, 
199, 202, 211, 212, 219; wv. Feeling, 
Faith. 

Tertullian, 168. 

Testimony, 186, 187, 196-198, 205, 228, 
229, 258; wv. Authority. 

Theism, 33, 50-52, 227, 263; wv. Athe- 
ism, Pantheism, God. 

Theology, 214 ff., 270; and philosophy, 
214 ff.; and science, 220-222; experi- 
mental (sentimental, mystic), 218,219; 
old and new, 231; rational, 218; vw. 
Apologetics. 

Theosophy, 42, 43, 71. 

Thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), 44, 66, 
125; 

Thomism, 284; wv. St. Thomas. 

Thought, 152 ff., 160, 189, 267; dis- 
cursive, 190; vw. Mind, Reason. 

Time,’ 129,.130;'237). 13271533, 461; 219, 
254, 275; wv. Space. 

Tracy, Destutt de, 29. 

Tradition, 10, 14, 16, 24, 27, 102, 159, 
162; 3170.5 185, 204 R205 5 1 224252, 
255, 261, 272, 274, 285; and revela- 
tion, 184; wv. Traditionalism, Author- 
ity. 

Traditionalism, viii, ix, 7 ff., 16 ff., 25, 
26.) 29331,.035,055, 47 95 PLoS oes. 
233, 256, 257-262, 265, 284-287; and 
rationalism, 265 ff. 

Transcendental Ego, 241, 277; ethics, 
60-63, 103; faculty, 62, 66, 150, 161; 
philosophy, 247; psychology, 178; view 
of history, 244; world, 277; v. Nou- 
mena(1). 

Transcendentalism, 161, 162, 185. 

Treitschke, von, 245. 

Trévern, Mgr. Lepappe de, Bishop of 
Strasbourg, 66, 85, 86, 90-92, 95, 96, 
98, 144, 174, 175, 188, 190, 207, 229, 
273; his Avertissement, 79, 90, 91, 93, 
1735-224, 0225, 229912753 our: 

Trinity, the, 30, 48, 115, 127, 129, 171, 
220, 245, 248. 

Truth, criterion of, 20, 53, 186, 191, 
197-211, 224, 295, 296; five kinds of, 
192, 193; love of, 158; meaning of, 
191-193, 292; need of, 193, 194; w. 
Certitude, Knowledge. 

Tiibingen, school of, viii, 46, 54, 55, 90, 
262, 263. 

Twice-divided line, 161, 268, 281. 

Tyrrell, George, 99, 199, 296, 297. 

Ubaghs, 97, 284, 285; wv. Louvain. 

Ultramontanism, 18, 26, 46, 55, 91. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAUTAIN 


Understanding, 44, 130, 146, 148-150, 
189, 289; divine, 133; forms of the, 
143; sphere of the, 149; v. Sensorium 
commune, Verstand. 

Univers Religieux, 33, 57. 

Utility, argument from, 6, 18, 202, 227, 
295, 296. 

Utilitarianism, ix, 271, 294. 


Va-et-vient, 103, 107, 116, 117, 135- 
137, 146. 

Valla, Father, 89. 

Variétés philosophiques, 82, 139, 144, 


172, 179, 180, 188,* 189, 220," 273, 
303. 

Vermeil, E., 36, 46, 72, 263, 302. 

Vernunft, 44, 47, 161; v. Reason. 

Verstand, 47, 149, 161; uv. Understand- 
ing. 

Vienna, school of, 46, 48, 49, 55. 

Vincent, 292. 

Visions, 178, 179. 

Vital principle, 145, 152, 164, 173; w. 
Elan vital. 

Vital process, 111; wv. Life. 

Vitalism, 45, 151, 246, 285; neo-, 142; 
v. Panvitalism, Life. 

Volker, Marcus, 44. 

Voltaire, 3, 46, 53, 234. 

Voluntarism, ix, 112, 136, 142, 159, 171, 
199, 209, 236, 246, 284, 286, 288, 
295, 297; wv. Will, Pragmatism. 

Verstellungsvermogen, 149; wv. Under- 
standing. 

Walther, Abbé, 60. 

War, 25, 245. 

Weill, G., 6, 301. 

Weltkreatur, 49; v. World-Spirit. 

Werner, K., 36, 46, 48, 53, 301, 302. 

Wilbois, 291, 312. 

Will, 120, 137, 145, 147, 153, 155, 158, 
172, 183,190, 195,197," 205eecues 
210, 219, 236, 240, 279, 293; autono- 
my of, 60, 65, 103; dialectics of, 290; 
primacy of, 145, 159, 191, 290; to 
believe, 171, 208; wv. Voluntarism, 
Faith, Soul, Reason. 

Windischmann, 49. 

Wisdom, 130, 133, 134, 140, 159, 279, 
280, 281; and knowledge, 201; hu- 
man and divine, 280. 

Wiseman, Cardinal, 50. 

Word, the, 106, 108, 115, 118,..12f, 
137, 182, 183-186, 200, 206, 211, 212, 
223, 262, 270, 280; human and di- 
vine, 281; wv. Light, Wisdom. 

Works, test of, 184, 201-203, 210-212, 
262; v. Truth, Pragmatism. 


INDEX | 327 


World, the, 48, 126, 729 #ff., 136, 220; and invisible, 221; wv. Nature, Nou- 
celestial, 130, 227; divine, 180, 220; mena(1). 
external, 131, 226; intelligible, 138, © World-Spirit, 129, 131-133. 
159, 180, 181; material, 157; phe- Zeitgeist, 243. 
nomenal, 133, 134, 189, 192, 277; Zeno, 246. 
spiritual, 157, 159; terrestrial, 130,  7Zinzendorf, 42. 
132, 227; transcendental, 277; visible 





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